Journal of Iranian Cultural Research

Journal of Iranian Cultural Research

Semiotic analysis of gender representation in national mourning following the Minab School tragedy: A case study of Fars News Agency

Document Type : Scientific Research Manuscript

Authors
Mohammad Taghi Karami Ghahi, 1
Shima Farzadmanesh 2
1 Professor of Women's Studies, Social Sciences Department, Allameh Tabataba'i University, Tehran, Iran
2 Ph.D in Sociology, Allameh Tabataba’i University, Tehran, Iran
10.22035/jicr.2026.3715.3911
Abstract
This study undertakes a socio-semiotic analysis of the visual representation of the military attack on the “Shajareh Tayebeh Minab” school as circulated in Iran’s official media, with a particular focus on the Fars News Agency. Its primary objective is to elucidate how a catastrophe is discursively transformed into national mourning through visual codes and the gendering of loss. Conceptually, the study is grounded in Afsaneh Najmabadi’s notion of the “gendered homeland” and Judith Butler’s concept of “grievability.” Empirically, the data are interpreted through a qualitative approach, drawing on van Leeuwen’s social semiotics as an analytical technique. The findings are articulated around three interrelated themes: 1. the gendering of the national body; 2. selective grievability and the amplification of loss through gender; and 3. a parallel narrative—an absent body and the modulation of gendered mourning. The analysis demonstrates that, by foregrounding the girl’s body, feminized signs, and memorial objects, the media turns “girlhood” into the central signifier of wounded innocence and the injured homeland. Moreover, through a hierarchical regime of visibility, certain lives are rendered more grievable than others. Yet this representational order is neither fully homogeneous nor hermetically closed. The mediated narrative of Makan Nasiri—one of the male students for whom, according to media accounts, no bodily trace had been recovered at the time of burial—generates a parallel and disruptive storyline in relation to the dominant template of girl-centered mourning.

Keywords
social semiotics
visual representation
national mourning
Minab School
gender
Subjects
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  • Receive Date 23 May 2026
  • Revise Date 23 August 2026
  • Accept Date 05 September 2026