The way the Mahabad protests were being covered by social media users across Arab countries and Iran marked regional tensions. Image remixed by Digital Trends. This post was written with data analytics contributions and technical consultations from Amir Rashidi, an Internet freedom researcher and activist. Farinaz Khosrawani was a 25-year-old Kurdish chambermaid who fell off of a hotel room balcony on May 4 while allegedly escaping a sexual assault. The incident resulted in protests from Kurds in Mahabad, who set Hotel Tara on fire in reaction to her death. The situation later escalated to police using tear gas to disperse the angry crowds from the area in front of the hotel. The incident intensified when allegations of suspected foul play by a security official in Khosrawani’s death emerged. The city's Kurdish population demanded justice for committing the offense. The tensions caused by this incident led to much social media coverage, often fueled by different biases and interests. Social media statistics indicated that one of the prominent groups in these discussions was Saudi Arabians, who called for solidarity between ethnic Kurds and Al Ahwazi Arabs, both significant minority groups inside of Iran, in opposing the Iranian state. To further support this, a Saudi cable that was recently published by the transparency group Wikileaks substantiated this application of social media by the Saudi government. The undated memo was sent from the Saudi Embassy in Tehran and suggested ways to publicly expose Iran’s social grievances through “the Internet, social media like Facebook and Twitter.” The exiled opposition movement known as Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) were another prominent voice on social media underlying the Iranian regime’s violence against protesters. Between May 4 and 20, these groups managed to create and carry out a social media strategy on Mahabad until it eventually started to fade. The Mahabad trend underscored several social and political factors in play, and highlighted the degree to which Iran's social media discourse lags behind other countries due in large part to its censorship regime. Iranian mainstream media did not immediately speak about the incident. A flow of domestic publications about Mahabad tensions only emerged after the media became aware of the Mahabad social media trend, and their coverage suggested that the trend had originated from outside Iran. Iranian media referred to the incident as “a plot by anti-revolutionary groups” and warned Iranian users to be wary of such social media traps. Conservative websites then took a more active role in describing the incident. This included a video from Hotel Tara’s CCTV camera which was circulated through Viber and conservative websites. The video showed Khosrawani entering a hotel room, with a man following her shortly thereafter. Her companion was said to be a private sector consultant, according to a hotel principal. The video suggested that these were arranged dates, and refuted earlier rumors about the role of a security official in the death. However, this footage was taken at a time of day different from the time that the incident occurred. This active approach of the Iranian media partially soothed public anguish, but was not sufficient to terminate the social media disagreements that had already started. Nowhere is this more apparent than in tweets coming from Iranians in the Persian language, and from Saudi Arabian users in the Arabic language. #العربیه #عربستان از تصویر 5 سال پیش بحرین رو به عنوان #شکنجه در #مهاباد استفاده کرد!! #عاصفة_الحزم pic.twitter.com/T1luEscS8G — hamed safari (@safari_h) May 24, 2015 #Al #Arabyia has republished pictures from 5 years ago as evidence of torture on Shi’ite prisoners in Bahrain on the news of Mahabad tensions! #عاجل هروب محافظ #مهاباد ومتظاهرين يحاصرون قائد الشرطة #إيران_تحترق #كردستان_تلتحق_بالأحواز_وتنتفض pic.twitter.com/OEyS91gIyZ — مدمرهم (@Madmarham1) May 9, 2015 the #governor of #Mahabad fled and protesters besieged the police headquarters #iran_burning #Kurdistan_joinsAhwaz_inrising These claims created a discourse on social media that was disconnected with the actual incident both in scope and content. The analysis of such discourse has become measurable through social media analytic tools. To this end, we tracked #مهاباد (Persian for #Mahabad) on Twitter and Instagram through Keyhole between May 4 (the day that Khosrawani passed away) and May 20. Keyhole is a social media analytic tool that enables real-time tracking of keywords and trends over Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Mahabad locals reportedly became aware of Khosrawani's death at Hotel Tara mainly through Viber groups that circulated the following message: “Kurdistan is not Isfahan. Our women are not alone.