This thesis examines how Ed Sheeran’s song and music video Azizam came to matter to people with ties to Iran, with a particular focus on experiences rooted in Sweden and disseminated through digital circulation beyond it. Rather than treating the song as a representation to be judged for accuracy, I approach it as a circulating cultural fragment that evokes recognition, ambivalence, humour, and discomfort in different ways. Drawing on semi-structured interviews conducted in Sweden and a small netnographic study of TikTok, the thesis explores how people relate the song’s visual and sonic references to their own histories, everyday practices, and diasporic positions. The analysis is informed by anthropological and interdisciplinary scholarship on representation, diasporic identity, affect, and mediascapes. I show how responses to Azizam take shape through sensory details, bodily reactions, and affective orientations, revealing moments where feelings of belonging circulate smoothly and others where they falter. These moments illuminate how “Persianness” is not experienced as a fixed cultural essence but as something negotiated, calibrated, and felt differently across contexts. By foregrounding ordinary reactions rather than definitive interpretations, the thesis argues that Azizam does not define Iranian or Persian culture but opens a space where diasporic identities can be sensed and momentarily aligned. In doing so, it highlights how popular music can function as an affective site through which diasporic life is lived and made meaningful across local and transnational settings.
Tara Shams (Wed,) studied this question.