page_title: 2017 Iranian presidential election
section_title: Role of social media
hierarchical_section_title: 2017 Iranian presidential election / Campaign / Role of social media
caption_attribution_description: English: Iranian presidential election debates, 2017
context_page_description: Presidential elections were held in Iran on 19 May 2017, the twelfth such election in Iran. Local elections were held simultaneously.
  Candidates' registration took place from 11 to 15 April 2017. Incumbent president Hassan Rouhani was eligible to run for re-election. His rivals were the conservatives' top candidate Ebrahim Raisi, the Islamic Coalition Party's Mostafa Mir-Salim and Mostafa Hashemitaba who ran with no partisan support.
  Rouhani was re-elected for a second term. According to results announced by the Interior Ministry, Rouhani received 23.5 of 41 million votes counted. His closest rival, Ebrahim Raisi, received 15.7 million votes. Rouhani was inaugurated on 5 August 2017 taking oath of office for the second time at the Parliament of Iran.
context_section_description: Social media was traditionally a tool for the reformists to campaign, but the presence of conservatives during the election was unprecedented in Iranian political history.
  Telegram instant messaging service, the most widely used messaging application in Iran, reportedly has more than 45 million users in a country of nearly 80 million as of April 2016. It serves as a platform for Iranians to express their political opinions and played an important role in the campaigns for the elections held in 2016 for Parliament and Assembly of Experts. Twitter is blocked in Iran, however, Iranians use proxies to tweet and those that create a buzz, then travel to Telegram channels, where "they can potentially reach a much wider audience" according to BBC.
  Two months before election, Iranian Judiciary arrested some pro-Hassan Rouhani Telegram channel administrators for “crimes against public morals and publishing obscenity”.
  The campaigners also heavily used Instagram and its feature of airing live videos to stream real-time campaign developments.
caption: Third Iranian debate, 2017 election
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