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Distant reading case study "Soraya Esfandiary-Bakhtiary" ​

Hybrid identities in a globalised world ​

Individuals who grow up in one culture with a background in another often face challenges of identity. People from both cultures may question their belonging and push them to "choose sides", which can lead to feelings of alienation. Hybrid identities are common in our globalised world but especially challenging when individuals have to navigate between cultures whose shared history is marked by war and oppression. Postcolonial theory can help us understand how these individuals engage with their heritage and how they respond to expectations. One interesting historical personality who had to navigate a hybrid identity was Soraya Esfandiary-Bakhtiary, who was Queen of Iran as the second wife of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Born in 1932, Soraya came from a Persian noble family in diplomatic service. She was raised in Berlin and Isfahan, and educated in London and Switzerland. She spent significant time in both Iran and Europe, which later led to tensions regarding her public persona as queen. She attempted to reconcile her royal responsibilities with her personal interests and Western influences. Her fashion choices, public appearances, and modern lifestyle contrasted with traditional expectations, while she also struggled to fully understand the lives and ideas of less educated Iranians, e.g. those from rural backgrounds. Simultaneously, perceptions of her life vary considerably to this day, and many fictional accounts in novels and film do not do the complexity of her story justice. Analysing how different groups speak about Soraya today can give us interesting insights into challenges of identity in a globalised world but also shed light on persisting stereotypes towards women and Iranian society.

Data set on YouTube ​

In the YouTube playlist Digital Cultures - Soraya, Monika has collected five different videos on Saraya's life and its pop-cultural perceptions with user comments (mostly) in English. Scrape these comments with the provided Python script. Before you put the comments into Voyant Tools, you may want to use Open Refine or EXCEL to delete non-English comments from the data sets.

Alternatively or in comparison, you may find reviews of podcasts covering topics such as migration, living in a foreign culture, multicultural family life etc. interesting. Here are a few recommendations:

‼️ While each of the podcasts may not have so many reviews per country, it can be interesting to scrape the data for all countries. And several smaller sets of podcast reviews can also be combined to form an insightful data set.

Suggestions for data analysis ​

Here are some research questions that you could explore based on the YouTube comments left under videos retelling the life of Princess Soraya:

  • What emotions do commenters express about Soraya’s life? What adjectives are frequently used to describe her?
  • Do viewers’ comments reflect varying perceptions of Princess Soraya's identity and agency? Is there a dominant view?
  • What themes regarding gender, ethnicity and power dynamics emerge from the comments?
  • In what ways do the comments reveal cultural biases of viewers regarding women’s roles in monarchies or Iranian culture?
  • Are viewers interested in the historical accuracy of the information presented in the videos? Do they point out aspects of Soraya's life that the videos have misrepresented or overlooked?
  • Do you think that the YouTube comments represent a form of public dialogue about history, identity, and gender?

In Voyant Tools, you may need different tools to answer these questions, so do not just focus on the word cloud / cirrus but also make use of tools showing you co-occurrences and keywords in context.