The #ValiAsr billboard in Teheran is designed to change its image with frequency. This flexibility allows it to diversify its messaging and to employ a subtle style of soft propaganda in #Iran. K Schwartz @Orientalniustav and I wrote this:⤵️ jadaliyya.com/Details/41116 via @jadaliyya
The #ValiAsr billboard has the capacity to respond to rapidly unfolding events. It lives in the moment and can go one day from venerating the martyrdom of #Soleimani to displaying a call for unity in the face of #corona the next. We discuss this style of #propaganda in our piece. 
With its capacity to toggle between divergent types of messaging, the #ValiAsr mural mixes thematically controversial images associated with the regime's hard #propaganda with more mundane ones like innocent holiday greeting for the winter solstice (shab-e yalda). See link above.
In our examination of the murals on the occasion of the assassination of Qassem #Soleimani, we show how he is depicted as a heroic martyr among the people, rather than one openly associated with the state. The depiction of Suleimani’s martyrdom was encoded in such a way as ...
..to downplay his association with the regime, promote Iranian national unity and present him as a hero of and for the people. Remarkably, the congregation of people standing behind Suleimani includes women with and without the chador. Nor is there any spatial gender segregation.
Find the interpretation of Kevin Schwartz and myself on all these⤴️aspects of the Islamic Republic of #Iran's soft #propaganda deployed at the #ValiAsr billboard here:
