Nationalizing the Internet to Break a Protest Movement: Internet Shutdown and Counter-Appropriation in Iran of late 2019

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To deal with a spontaneous civil uprising following a substantial rise in gas prices, the Iranian security apparatus imposed techno-political measures in late 2019, blocking access to international websites and services. To analyze these measures, we conducted 19 interviews with Iranians living inside and outside the country. We argue that the picture of the shutdown, as portrayed in Western media, does not accurately describe the infrastructural restrictions and propose an analysis based on the concept of an internet nationalization. This paper offers an in-depth analysis of what the nationalization meant and how it affected the lives of Iranians participating or not participating in the protests. We also report on a variety of creative measures, both technical and non-technical, Iranians took to counter-appropriate the government-imposed shutdown of international connectivity. Based on these data, we elaborate on the concept of counter-appropriation.