Chapter 6: Football in the Shadow of Politics: Persian-Speaking Comments on Twitter/X Refusing the Iran Football National Team to Sing National Anthem

This chapter analysed the narratives surrounding the Iranian national football team’s refusal to sing the national anthem in support of domestic protesters in response to Mahsa Amini’s death by Iran’s morality police at the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar through an examination of user comments on Twitter/X. The team’s action garnered considerable media attention and sparked widespread discussions on Twitter. A search query incorporating keywords such as ‘National Team’ (تیم ملی), ‘FIFA World Cup’ (جام جهانی فوتبال), ‘World Cup’ (جام جهانی), Qatar (قطر) and ‘Football’ (فوتبال) was utilized to collect data, resulting in 9,411 tweets, which were retained for analysis. Qualitative content analysis, utilizing a pre-existing codebook for frame exploration, was employed for data coding. Five primary frames emerged: political identity, ostracizing, representation, athlete activists and Islamic values. Through these frames, the chapter highlights a nuanced distinction between the nation and the state, revealing the strategies of both entities to strategically leverage elite athletes for political purposes. This study contributes to understanding the complexities of nationalism in a Muslim country like Iran, which has historically utilized sports to project its national superiority and ideology on the global stage.