Annenberg >> CGCS >> International Initiatives >> Iraq & the Middle East >> Iran Media 2009
Iran's Media Thirty Years after the Revolution: The State, New Spaces, and Identity in the Islamic Republic
As the Iranian Revolution comes upon its 30th anniversary in 2009 new communication technologies, such as the internet and satellite television have transformed the Islamic Republic's media landscape. During the revolution, cassette tapes, pamphlets and other small media mobilized various segments of Iran's public, supplanted during the early years of the Islamic Republic by visual media such as television, film, and graphic murals. In the early nineties, new media forms like VCRs, satellite television, and the internet have offered further visual spaces for communication.
Evolving from a "revolutionary media" to a "reform period" in the late nineties, Iranian media grew from a few publications and broadcast outlets to a wide array of print, satellite, Internet and mobile telephone operations, some of which was curtailed under the Presidency of Mahmud Ahmadinejad. The US government has also targeted Iranian audiences, such as youth with Radio Farda, combining international pop music and pro-American messages, followed by Iranian exile programs, advocating "regime change," broadcast from Los Angeles to Iran via satellite. The state has been apprehensive of the affects of these new media, and their possible consequences for social and political change and their ability to challenge the ideological project of the Islamic Republic. While the state has been unable to withstand this interest in new technology, it has attempted to restrict reformist papers, satellite dishes and the World Wide Web.
However, the state's attempt to reign in and censor information have resulted in spaces of civil society and political culture thriving via the use of digital technologies such as SMS, internet and blogs, chat rooms and social networking sites as political protest media, empowering audiences, civil society organizations, and marginalized political groups. The CGCS day-long workshop will explore the role of mass media, broadcast, print, and the internet and its role in the relationship between Iranian society and the Islamic Republic. It will provide a forum for a range of research dealing with Iranian media and political socialization and participation, and the network of political communications between the state, media and intermediary interest groups, such as religious foundations, military factions, and grassroots youth and women's movement.
Workshop Objectives and Themes
Media research on the Middle East has largely neglected Iran's media compared to the Arab World in the aftermath of the "Al-Jazeera phenomena." The few extensive works on the subject include Annabelle Sreberny-Mohammadi and Ali Mohammadi's Small Media, Big Revolution: Communication, Culture, and the Iranian Revolution and Roxanne Varzi's Warring Souls: Youth, Media, and Martyrdom in Post-Revolution Iran. Edited works include Mehdi Semati's volume Media, Culture and Society in Iran: Living with Globalization and the Islamic State, and the January 2008 issue of the Journal of Media and Religion devoted to research on religion and media in the Iranian context. This meeting seeks to bring together and promote the interaction among academics, researchers, and analysts from a variety and diversity of perspectives, to generate a critical, in-depth discussion and analysis of the role of Iran's media in its historical, theoretical, and socio-political contexts. The purpose of this workshop is to focus on the themes of media politics, the public sphere in the Islamic Republic and the role of media in political discourses. In terms of historical themes, it will cover Iranian media under the Pahlavi monarchy and the Iranian Revolution, and under the theme of alternative media, it will focus on blogging and activist bloggers as sites for digital resistance and new forms of social interaction.
The overarching goal of this meeting is develop a conceptual and theoretical framework to investigate the role of new media in Iran's socio-political context. The aims of the meeting include mapping out and analyzing the affects of media on political and social changes among the state's political strata, and audiences and users. It will explore the relationship between media and Iran historically and how they relate to current events in Iran on a national and geo-political level. It will focus on the functions of the internet and satellite TV in Iranian state-society relations, and how they have provided for the access of social groups that have historically been excluded from the public sphere.
The range of invited speakers includes a diverse, interdisciplinary group from media and communication studies, anthropology, sociology, political science, history and religious studies. Furthermore, the venue will engage and offers broader knowledge to media and communication related NGOs, Iranian media practitioners and producers, and policy circles in order to share their experiences and to discuss the dynamics of Iran's media. This meeting should also be of interest to audiences from media and Middle East studies.
Free but RSVP to Sylvie Beauvais.
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SCHEDULE
Room 500, Annenberg School for Communication, 3620 Walnut Street
9:00-10:00 Breakfast
10:00 Welcome and Introduction: Monroe Price, Ibrahim Al-Marashi, Marwan Kraidy
10:30-12:00 Panel 1: The Evolution of Iran's Media Landscape, Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet, Moderator
- "Internal and External Broadcast Services and Regulations in Iran: An Overview," Yahya R. Kamalipour, Purdue University Calumet
- "Tehran Speaks, But What Does It Say? A Visual Analysis of The City as Medium," or "The Launch of BBC Persian," Annabelle Srebreny, SOAS, University of London
- "From Quest of Persia to Islamic Sims: Identity Construction in Iranian Video Games," Vit Sisler, Northwestern University
- Discussion
12:00-1:30 Lunch
1:30-3:00 Panel 2 Iran's Media and State-Society Relations, Marwan Kraidy, Moderator
- "Contradictions in the Iranian State and the Media," Gholam Khiabany, , London Metropolitan University
- "Public Communication and Political Authority: The Case Of Non-Domiciled Iranian Media," Max Hanska, London School of Economics and Political Science
- "(New) Media in Iran: On Communication and (Un)popular Culture," Mehdi Semati, Eastern Illinois University
- Discussion
3:00-3:30 Break
3:30-5:00 Panel 3: The Internet and Blogosphere in Iran, Ibrahim Al-Marashi, Moderator
- "Resistance 2.0: Power and Counter-Power in the Persian Webosphere," Mahmood Enayat, University of Oxford
- "Mapping Iran's Online Public: Politics and Culture in the Persian Blogosphere," John Kelly
- "CyberShi'ism in Post-Revolutionary Iran: The Case of Reformist Politics Online," Babak Rahimi, University of California San Diego
- Discussion
5:00- 5:30 Panel 4: Concluding Discussion
5:30 Reception
6:30 Dinner
This workshop is co-sponsored by the Penn Middle East Center.
Last updated: January 16, 2009
