Center for Global Communication Studies

Iran Media Program

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  • Publication
    Citation Filtered: Iran’s Censorship of Wikipedia
    (2013-11-01) Nazeri, Nima; Anderson, Collin
    Using proxy servers in Iran, researchers Collin Anderson and Nima Nazeri identified every blocked Persian language Wikipedia article and divided blocked pages into ten categories to determine the type of content state censors are most adverse. In total, 963 blocked articles were found, covering a range of socio-political and sexual content including politics, journalism, the arts, religion, sex, sexuality, and human rights. Censors repeatedly targeted Wikipedia pages about government rivals, minority religious beliefs, and criticisms of the state, officials, and the police. Just under half of the blocked Wiki-pages are biographies, including pages about individuals the authorities have allegedly detained or killed. Based on prior research, it is known that Iran’s Internet filtration relies on blacklists of specifically designated URLs and URL keywords. Keyword filtration blindly blocks pages that contain prohibited character patterns in the URL. Sexual content is the main target of keywords, for example most keywords are sexual and/or profane terms. We found dozens of pages that seem to be unintentionally censored by keyword filtering, meaning that they were misidentified as sexual or profane and contained no content likely to offend Iranian authorities.
  • Publication
    Soft War: A New Episode in the Old Conflicts Between Iran and the United States
    (2013-11-01) Sabet, Farzan; Safshekan, Roozbeh
    Soft war is ubiquitous today with the way the Islamic Republic of Iran characterizes its relationship with the West, and is a key concern of Iranian national security policy. Few, however, have seriously undertaken the task of defining what soft war is in concrete terms. This analysis proposes a definition of soft war grounded in Joseph Nye’s concept of ‘soft power’ and the history of Iran’s encounter with the West, particularly the United States. In this framework, soft war is the exercise of soft power by the United States on Iran, creating security challenges for the Islamic Republic and forcing the Republic to respond. This analysis not only explores the genealogy of this conflict and how it has unfolded under the Islamic Republic, but also attempts to assess the regime’s strategy in the soft war. This work can be an aid to policymakers, scholars, and others in better understanding soft war and its implications for Iran’s domestic politics and foreign affairs, in addition to U.S.-Iran relations.
  • Publication
    Outside In: The Practices of Iranian Diaspora Journalists
    (2013-01-01) Wojcieszak, Magdalena; Brouillette, Amy; Smith, Briar
    The Iran Media Program (IMP) conducted a survey of Iranian journalists living and working outside Iran. The IMP’s aim was to examine more closely the role and relationship between Iranian reporters abroad and their international and domestic audiences, as well as to broaden our knowledge of the Iranian diaspora media culture. With this report, the IMP hopes to contribute new insights regarding the transnational dimensions of Iranian journalism, as well as how Iranian journalists working outside Iran view their roles within and perspectives on the broader Iranian media ecosystem. The IMP’s research adds to a growing body of knowledge regarding the dynamics of Iran’s domestic media environment and news-consuming public.
  • Publication
    National Web Studies: Mapping Iran Online
    (2012-02-01) Rogers, Richard; Weltevrede, Esther; Niederer, Sabine; Borra, Erik
    This work offers an approach to conceptualizing, demarcating and analyzing a national web. Instead of defining a priori the types of websites to be included in a national web, the approach put forward here makes use of web devices (platforms and engines) that purport to provide (ranked) lists of URLs relevant to a particular country. Once gathered in such a manner, the websites are studied for their properties, following certain of the common measures (such as responsiveness and page age), and repurposing them to speak in terms of the health of a national web: Are sites lively, or neglected? The case study in question is Iran, which is special for the degree of Internet censorship undertaken by the state. Despite the widespread censorship, we have found a highly responsive Iranian web. We also report on the relationship between blockage, responsiveness and freshness, i.e., whether blocked sites are still up, and also whether they have been recently updated. Blocked yet blogging portions of the Iranian web show strong indications of an active Internet censorship circumvention culture. In seeking to answer, additionally, whether censorship has killed content, a textual analysis shows continued use of language considered critical by the regime, thereby indicating a dearth of self-censorship, at least for websites that are recommended by the leading Iranian platform, Balatarin. The study concludes with the implications of the approach put forward for national web studies, including a description of the benefits of a national web health index.
  • Publication
    Finding a Way - How Iranian Reach for News and Information
    (2013-02-01) Wojcieszak, Magdalena; Smith, Briar; Enayat, Mahmood
    The Iran Media Program publishes its groundbreaking 2011-2012 report on media consumption in Iran: Finding a Way – How Iranians reach for news and information. The report was authored by Magdalena Wojcieszak, Briar Smith and Mahmood Enayat and encompasses the results of two surveys conducted over the past year: the first is a field-based, systematically recruited sample of Iranians in several major metropolitan areas which mirrored the demographics of the country. The second study is an online questionnaire among young, metropolitan, educated and technologically savvy Iranians, and was aimed at illustrating the extent to which these youth employ new media for political purposes over a year after the contested Iranian elections and during the Tunisia, Egypt and Libya uprisings. The report combines the two studies for a comprehensive look at media consumption in Iran. Both studies obtained information on what sources Iranians consider most important for news and information, what kinds of new and traditional media are used and for what purposes, and which new media are used to discuss various issues. The prevalence of Internet use, online activities, and speed of access was assessed, as was the use of and engagement with certain platforms such as blogs, Facebook and Twitter. The surveys also examined the use of circumvention tools as well as the extent to which Iranians think citizens can be empowered through the use of new media.
  • Publication
    The Islamic Republic’s Political Elite & Syria: Understanding What They Think Through Iranian Media Narratives
    (2013-06-01) Sabet, Farzan
    The Islamic Republic of Iran has been the central regional backer of the Bashar al-Assad regime since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in March 2011. Despite the importance of Iran in the drama unfolding in Syria, including any possible resolution to the conflict, the Iranian political elite’s perceptions of the Syrian civil war are arguably not well understood. This report attempts to uncover these perceptions by analyzing the Iranian print news media and highlighting the dominant narratives. As one of the first systematic studies of Iranian media narratives on the Syrian civil war, this report can be an aid to policymakers, academics, journalists and others in understanding the Iranian political elite’s thinking on this issue.
  • Publication
    Whither Blogestan: Evaluating Shifts in Persian Cyberspace
    (2014-03-01) Giacobino, Laurent; Abadpour, Arash; Anderson, Collin; Petrossian, Fred; Nelleman, Caroline
    Between 2002 and 2010, the Persian blogosphere—or what is referred to as “Blogestan”—exploded in size and became the topic of numerous reports, essays, videos and books. Global interest in this emerging trend, however, seemed to decrease during the second presidential mandate of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (2009- 2013), when online social networking and microblogging became the most discussed and researched IT-related topics, along with the Iranian regime’s policies aimed at deterring online expression. This report is aimed at addressing whether Blogestan itself has faded in size, activity and influence since 2009. We use three parallel methodologies: An audience survey of 165 Persian blog users from inside and outside of Iran; a web crawling analysis of the Iranian blogosphere; and a series of interviews with 20 influential bloggers living outside and inside Iran.
  • Publication
    Facing Boundaries, Finding Freedom: An In-Depth Report on Iranian Journalists Working in Iran
    (2013-06-01) Wojcieszak, Magdalena; Brouillette, Amy; Smith, Briar
    Despite extensive documentation of and attention to direct state pressure on journalists and the almost continual reissuing of “red lines” as a pretense for these media-repressive tactics, little systematic research has been done about the field of journalism in Iran. Beyond direct state repression—harassment, arrests, imprisonment—Iranian journalists face a myriad of regulatory and bureaucratic controls that restrict editorial freedom and the flow of information between journalists and citizens. Yet we know little about how reporters in Iran contend with these challenges on an everyday basis, and in particular outside the context of tightened state controls and crackdowns on journalists during political elections. Hence, there is a need to look “beyond the prison cell” and to examine more closely the everyday operating conditions in which Iranian journalists work, as well as their professional ethics and standards, in order to illustrate a fuller picture of the dynamics of Iran’s media culture. With this report, the Annenberg School for Communication’s Iran Media Program offers—to our knowledge—the first systematic evidence of the working environment of Iranian journalists. It addresses a critical information and research gap regarding the reporting practices of Iranian journalists, their perceptions of editorial freedoms, their ideas of what the media’s role is in society, and the ways in which reporters and editors contend with Internet filtering and censorship. The fundamental aim of this study is to generate a deeper understanding of how Iranian journalists operate both within and despite an environment of heavy state oversight and restrictions, as well as to broaden our perspective of the complexities of media censorship in Iran.
  • Publication
    Numbers Which Make the News: Online Seminar Series Final Report
    (2012-03-01) Abadpour, Arash
    This document describes the online seminar series “Number which make the news”. These seminars were held by the Iran Media Program in October and November of 2011. The language of the seminars was Persian and the attendants were selected from bloggers, activists, and journalists who work on Iran issues. This document is organized as follows. First, Section 1 describes the purpose of these seminars. Then, in Sections 2 and 3, the audience of the seminars and the presentation format are outlined. The document continues with Section 4 which contains description of the contents of the seminars and Section 5 which covers the feedback received from the audience. Finally, Section 6 provides the concluding remarks and a list of suggestions for future work. At the end of this document there is an appendix. This section contains the outlines of the individual seminars. Additionally, this section also contains the list of the pieces authored and published by members of the audience of these seminars, as the members were required to participate in the program. The majority of web addresses provided in the footnotes of this document are in Persian. These addresses point to reference material used throughout the presentations or content produced by audience members. In many cases an English excerpt is provided where the reference is made.
  • Publication
    The Political Affiliations of Iranian Newspapers
    (2013-05-01) Rafizadeh, Shahram; Alimardani, Mahsa
    The complexities of the Iranian media ecosystem become most apparent during the election season when the heightened political climate leads to intensified scrutiny to and reliance on print media. In the absence of political parties, the press serves as a valuable tool during election campaigns, and this report highlights the shifting allegiances in national publications with a focus on politics, economics, and society. Newspapers are divided by faction (Pro-government Conservative, Traditional Conservative, Critical-of-the-Government Conservative, Affiliated with Reformists, and Reformist), and labeled with their 2009 political affiliations, their expected affiliations for 2013, and their stance on reformists. Once the Guardian Council releases the final vetted candidates on May 24th, these newspapers will become active in supporting their preferred factions or candidates.