Digital Violence and Algorithmic Colonialism: Online Narratives about Kurdish Political Women Sentenced to Death in Iran

This study employs qualitative narrative analysis to examine how online discourses surrounding three Kurdish political women sentenced to death—Zeynab Jalalian, Varishe Moradi, and Pakhshan Azizi—are reshaped on the X platform. Drawing on postcolonial feminism (Spivak, Mohanty, Mahmood) and critical media and data colonialism studies (Zuboff, Noble, Chakravartty), it argues that digital violence—including internet shutdowns in Kurdistan (2025), hacking, and bot flooding—combined with state-sponsored disinformation (e.g., labeling as “separatists” or “spies”) and narratives amplified by ultranationalist opposition groups, transforms these women’s gender and ethnic identities from “subjects of resistance” into “security threats.” This epistemic violence diminishes public engagement in campaigns like #NoToExecution, lowering the political cost of executions for the Iranian regime. X’s algorithms, by amplifying state and nationalist discourses while suppressing #NoToExecution posts (e.g., those targeting Pakhshan Azizi in 2024), reproduce ethnic and gender hierarchies, marginalizing feminist resistance. Embedded within digital hyper-imperialism, this process silences Kurdish women’s voices in the Global South and redefines gendered subjectivities in digital spaces. Through qualitative analysis of key X posts (2022–2025) and critical discourse analysis, this research examines competing narratives—activist, state-sponsored, and ultranationalist opposition—to reveal how algorithmic colonialism and digital surveillance regulate gender and ethnic orders in the post-pandemic global landscape. Leveraging a postcolonial feminist lens, the findings call for rethinking gender theories from peripheral perspectives and propose strategies for digital resistance against algorithmic domination. This study contributes to understanding the global digital order’s impact on gendered subjectivities in the Middle East, highlighting the dual role of social media as both a site of oppression and a potential space for feminist and ethnic resistance in the face of digital marginalization.