Document Type : Research Paper

Author

Assistant Professor, Allameh Tabataba'i University: Tehran, Iran

10.22054/qjss.2025.86591.2897

Abstract

Utilizing big data available in cyberspace, this article employs a framework to measure governance social capital. The computational social science method has examined the perceptions of the statistical population of users on Twitter, Instagram, and Telegram across four periods in the year 1401 , addressing the challenges to governance social capital during the Iranian protests.
The results indicate that this composite index underwent a sharp declining trend coinciding with the protest events, decreasing by 11.46 percent within a 0 to 100 range in terms of sentiment analysis. The findings are consistent with theories that frame protests as a signal of reduced trust and institutional weakness in the performance of governance values, as well as a violation of the social contract. The study identifies seven key challenges to governance social capital in the context of the 1401 protests in Iran: disruption in the public sphere, structural inefficiency and recourse to expediency in crisis, an ambiguous and unpromising future horizon, reduced public resilience, the activation of social fault lines against the government, a crisis of the intermediary class and civil society accompanied by diminished participation, the discrediting of the benevolence of officials, and the devaluation of shared values and national identity.

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