Mediating Design Claims: The Social Media and Housing Disaster of the 2017 Halabja Earthquake

In disasters, social media offers a platform for sharing vital information between affected communities, responders, journalists, designers, planners, and policy makers. In some cases, however, social media seeds contentious political and professional debates. The social media discussions that proliferated around the damage at the Maskan-e Mehr social housing site in Iran immediately following the Halabja Earthquake that struck at the Iran-Iraq border on November 12, 2017, became the center of heated design and policy controversy. This paper analyzed the uses, misuses, and politicization of design expertise. Social media content across three platforms was analyzed and compared with state-of-the-art engineering and planning knowledge. The study found that design experts have active and passive roles in the politicization of disasters. Examples were provided of ways that designers politicize discourse around disasters in both public and political spheres through social media. The impact of their social media engagement in contentious politics and high-level policy was brought to light. The authors suggest an expanded role for design experts and expertise in post-disaster political engagement.