Election Journalism: Investigating Media Bias on Telegram during the 2017 Presidential Election in Iran

Abstract

While past studies have predominantly focused on bias in traditional mainstream media in the Western context, this article seeks to explore bias on the Telegram App during the 2017 presidential election in Iran. In doing so, the most visited Telegram news channel titled AkhbareFori (literally meaning breaking news) was selected. Three types of bias (i.e. gatekeeping, coverage and statement) were examined through quantitative content analysis. The results of the study regarding gatekeeping bias show the rate of mainstream sources affiliated to the Reformists was higher than the rate of Conservative sources. In addition, the study indicates that the rate of news coverage from the Reformists was higher than the rate of news coverage from the Conservatives. Moreover, the results indicate that the channel showed higher positive orientation towards the Reformists. Accordingly, AkhbareFori had all three types of bias in favor of the Reformists. Other characteristics of the AkhbareFori channel such as use of news values and tone of news items are also discussed in the article.

Keywords:

• media bias
• gatekeeping bias
• coverage bias
• statement bias
• presidential election
• Iran
• online journalism
• social media
• Telegram

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

Funding for this paper was received from Iran’s National Elites Foundation.