Since the outbreak of the current wave of protests in Iran, two sharply competing narratives have emerged to explain what is unfolding in the streets.

For the ruling establishment, the unrest is portrayed as a foreign-engineered plot. They argue it is an externally-driven attempt to destabilise the state through manipulation, infiltration, and psychological operations.

For the opposition, the same events are framed as a nationwide uprising rooted in long-standing grievances. They argue the protests signal a rupture between society and the political system.

How the “story” of a conflict is told is a key component in warfare. The Iran protests are offering two very different stories.

In the digital age, psychological warfare has moved beyond conventional propaganda into the realm of what academics Ihsan Yilmaz and Shahram Akbarzadeh call Strategic Digital Information Operations (SDIOs).

Psychological operations function as central instruments of power, designed not only to suppress dissent but reshape how individuals perceive reality, legitimacy, and political possibility. Their objective is cognitive and emotional:

These techniques are employed not only by states, but increasingly by non-state actors as well.

Social media platforms have become the primary theatres of this psychological struggle. Hashtags, memes, manipulated images, and coordinated commenting – often amplified by automated accounts – are used to frame events, assign blame, and shape emotional responses at scale.

Crucially, audiences are not passive recipients of these narratives. Individuals sympathetic to a particular framing actively reproduce, reinforce, and police it within digital echo chambers. In this way, confirmation bias flourishes and alternative interpretations are dismissed or attacked.

Because of this, narrative control is not a secondary dimension of conflict but a central battleground. How an uprising is framed can shape its trajectory. It can determine whether it remains peaceful or turns violent, and whether domestic repression or foreign intervention comes to be seen as justified or........

© The Conversation