Abstract

In recent years, social media have become one of the most consequential arenas for the representation, evaluation, and contestation of police performance. In this space, police action is represented not only through official reports, but also through videos, news posts, user comments, hashtags, reposts, and intertextual links. Drawing on an integrated model and a mixed-methods design, the present study examines supportive and oppositional discourses about the police on Iranian social media and seeks to identify the meaning-making mechanisms and conversational dynamics through which police action is variously delegitimized or reoriented toward the reconstruction of public trust. The data were coded in binary form (0/1) according to 22 discourse features derived from the study’s integrated analytical model. The findings indicate that pro-police discourse is predominantly stabilized, hegemonic, and legitimizing in nature. This discourse represents police action through mechanisms such as active assertion, reference to conflict-related events, and the mitigation of negative aspects of police conduct, while conversationally sustaining itself through a high degree of discursive continuity. By contrast, anti-police discourse is event-centered, reactive, affectively charged, and generalizing. Through mechanisms such as indetermination, suppression, individual specification, and passive assertion, it links police conduct to violence, injustice, and violations of citizens’ rights. The study concludes that reducing negative media attacks against the police cannot be achieved merely through denial or promotional content production. Rather, it requires transparency, rapid accountability, reform of field conduct, rights-oriented dialogue, and the redefinition of police discourse around an institution that is authoritative, law-abiding, and accountable.