Iranian Media: The Paradox of Modernity

Abstract

The post-revolutionary state in Iran has tried to amalgamate “Sharia with electricity” and modernity with what it considers as “Islam”. This process has been anything but smooth and has witnessed intensive forms of political and social contestation. This paper examines key aspects of the contradictions and tensions in the Iranian media market, social stratification and competing forms of “Islamism”/nationalism by looking at the context of production and consumption of the media in Iran. It provides an overview of the expansion of the Iranian communication system. By examining the role of the state in this process and the economic realities of the media in Iran, it challenges the one-dimensional liberal focus on the repressive role of the state and argues against the misguided view that sees a political economy view of the centrality of capital, class and the state to media as irrelevant in the global South. It suggests that the Iranian case also demonstrates a peculiar feature of the Iranian communication industry where liberalization and privatization are the order of the day, but where the state is still reluctant to give up its ideological control over the media. And this is another contradiction (or limit) of an overtly ideological state keen on “development” and “modernization” caught between the web of pragmatism and the imperative of the market, and the straightjacket of “Islamism”.

Keywords:

• Iranian media
• global modernity
• modernization
• media ownership
• media and state

Notes

¹ http://www.bbc.co.uk/persian/business/story/2006/07/060703_he-privatization.shtml

² http://www.bbc.co.uk/persian/business/story/2006/07/060703_he-privatization.shtml.

³ http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats5.htm

⁴ Keyhan, Ettela'at and Hamshahri each cost 200 Rials (two US cents) while the price of many “independent” publications is usually 500 Rials (five US cents). The gap in price is even bigger in the magazine market. The price of reformist Kian (4,000 Rials) was 180 per cent more than Keyhan Farhangi (1,500 Rials), which is published by Keyhan.