Hossein Kermani, PhD
MSCA Postdoctoral Researcher
Main Research Areas
- Social media activism
- Computational propaganda
- Digital and computational methods
- Critical discourse studies on social media
Hossein Kermani is a MSCA post-doctoral researcher at the Political Communication Research Group of the University of Vienna. Hossein is studying social media, digital repression, computational propaganda and political activism in restrictive contexts, with particular attention to Iran. His research mainly revolves around a) the discursive power of social media in changing the microphysics of power and playing with the political and social structures, and b) the strategies that have been employed to manipulate and dismantle social media activism in non-democratic societies. In order to do so, Hossein is chiefly combining social and communication theories with computational techniques, in particular Social Network Analysis (SNA), Natural Language Processing (NLP), and critical discourse analysis.
Hossein has recently published in, among others, New Media and Society, Big Data & Society, Information, Communication, and Society and Asian Journal of Communication. His first book, social media research in Iran (in Farsi), was published in 2020. He is now working on his first English book, Twitter activism in Iran, which Palgrave Macmillan will publish in 2024.
Hossein welcomes interested students to work with him on their Master’s thesis or Ph.D. dissertations.
Hossein Kermani
Publications
2025
Kermani, H. (2025). Computational propaganda. In A. Nai, M. Grömping, & D. Wirz (Eds.), Elgar Encyclopedia of Political Communication (pp. 245-249). Edward Elgar Publishing.
Kermani, H. (2025). Connective action. In A. Nai, M. Grömping, & D. Wirz (Eds.), Elgar Encyclopedia of Political Communication (pp. 266–270). Edward Elgar Publishing.
Kermani, H., Bayat Makou, A., & Behzadian Nejad, R. (2025). Decoupled agendas under repression: Social media and state media during COVID-19 in I. Frontiers in Communication, 10. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2025.1598405
Kermani, H., Neyazi, T. A., & Lecheler, S. (2025). The limits of computational propaganda: Investigating underexplored platforms and contexts. Political Communication. https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2025.2595596
Kermani, H. (2025). The art of delirium: Social media suppression in authoritarian regimes. Communication Theory, 35(4), 197-216. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1093/ct/qtaf006
Kermani, H. (2025). Twitter activism in Iran: Social media and democracy in authoritarian regimes. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-81538-6
2024
Kermani, H., & Hooman, N. (2024). Hashtag feminism in a blocked context: The mechanisms of unfolding and disrupting #rape on Persian Twitter. New Media & Society, 26(8), 4750-4784. https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448221128827
Kermani, H., Bayat Makou, A., Tafreshi, A., Mohamad Ghodsi, A., Atashzar, A., & Nojoumi, A. (2024). Computational vs. qualitative: Analyzing different approaches in identifying networked frames during the Covid-19 crisis. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 27(4), 401-415. https://doi.org/10.1080/13645579.2023.2186566
2023
Kermani, H., Bayat Makou, A., Tafreshi, A., Mohamad Ghodsi, A., & Ataee, H. (2023). Bots versus humans: Discursive activism during the pandemic in the Iranian Twittersphere. Social Media + Society. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/205630512312169
Kermani, H., Khorshidi, M., & Ashtiani Araghi, M. (2023). A case study on the COVID-19 discourse in politicians’ speeches: Investigations into the speeches of former Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. Studies in Communication Sciences, 23(3), 279-295. https://doi.org/10.24434/J.SCOMS.2023.03.2984