Human Rights, Iranian Migrants, and State Media

From Media Portrayal to Civil Reality

Shabnam Moinipour

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429681936
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Langues et linguistique
• Subtopic: Sociolinguistique

This book offers a detailed analysis of the Islamic Republic of Iran's approach towards human rights in the media. It looks at the state-owned and state-controlled Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), employing content analysis and multimodal critical discourse analysis to explore its underlying strategies in portraying the international rights norms. The book also features analysis of surveys and interviews of recent Iranian migrants to determine the extent to which the Iranian public is aware of human rights principles and their views on whether and how the international rights norms are portrayed on IRIB.

1 Human Rights and Media: Contemporary Authoritarian Iran

The Issue at Hand

Following a long history of injustices emanating from global historical invasions and wars, which reached their climax in the 20th century with the two world wars, human rights were officially born and institutionalized at the global level with the founding of the United Nations (UN) in 1945. The UN charter was “the first international mechanism that incorporated human rights as a concept and made the promotion and protection of those rights one of the purposes of” not only individuals but also the “collective obligations of states” (1). Since then, human rights have become an ongoing dialogue between various entities and states, which are morally and legally obligated to not only protect their citizens from human rights violations but also promote human rights principles. Even though the UN does not have enforcement powers, for most states, Iran included, keeping a good image in the international community is of utmost importance. Many individuals and organizations scrutinize human rights within Iran. However, the Iranian regime is in such gross violation of citizens’ rights that the promotion of human rights principles by Iran is hardly ever closely examined. The scrutiny of the promotional aspect of international human rights law is one of the gaps that this book intends to fill.

Intertwined with the above is the careful analysis of the state media in Iran. How much power the media has is unknown. Contrary to what some scholars believe, it is difficult to measure the influence and effect they have on people. However, the media, undeniably, has a force that shifts individual opinions one way or another. The Nazis were a great example of a state power using the available means of communication. They were masters of propaganda and exploited “the media of the press, cinema, and especially radio to attract support and create a consensus around their regime” (2). The definition of propaganda employed by the Iranian regime resembles that of the Nazis—articulating a few fundamental viewpoints through prescribed clichés and repeating it so much so that the forgetful masses would engrave it in their hearts.

The 1979 Islamic Revolution rendered Iran hybrid, which means that the political system landed on the overlap between democracy and authoritarianism. This hybridity has caused both democratic and authoritarian elements to exist in the country. This hybridity, in turn, has created ambiguities in the political system, which helps the regime function within a complex and diverse society.

Formal communications in Iran are entirely regime-owned and controlled. Despite this control, the Iranian regime, as is expected in an authoritarian setting, uses coercion to clamp down on journalists, bloggers, and social media users. However, every clampdown seems to have a ripple effect, which strengthens resistances in the society. Otherwise, the consensual hegemony created through the continuous blocking of communication applications such as LINE, WhatsApp, and Tango and the expansion of “smart filtering” has no other explanation. Such resistance on the part of the public adds to the complexity of Iran if we are to believe that it is the citizens of an authoritarian nation who, themselves, contribute to the survival of an “existing hegemony” based on an “established reciprocal relationship,” which are ideological and material in nature (3). It is, therefore, necessary to also carefully look at the Iranian community and determine what they think of human rights as portrayed by Iran’s propaganda machine.

This book examines human rights in Iran—how the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) portrays them and how Iranians perceive them. It does so only based on the core instruments to which Iran is committed and on humanitarian norms and jus cogens. Jus cogens belong to a doctrine of international law, which “asserts the existence of fundamental legal norms from which no derogation is permitted” (4).

The Islamic Republic of Iran has committed itself to human rights through its membership to the UN and by remaining a signatory to five core international instruments: The International Covenant on Elimination of Racial Discrimination, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (5). The study of the IRIB is of utmost importance since, as a form of mass communication and as the regime-owned and controlled apparatus, it is meant to be used for the promotion and propagation of human rights principles as per the UN Charter.

IRIB: Television News

The state-run television as part of IRIB was chosen as the focus of this research not only because IRIB is the most highly funded media outlet in the country (6), but also because, according to the Iran Media Program of the University of Pennsylvania, which carried out a field-based study in four major metropolitan cities in Iran (Tehran, Mashhad, Tabriz, and Shiraz), television, radio, and the press, as traditional forms of news media, were preferred over new forms of news media such as the Internet, text message, or social media by the participants. A full 96% of the people queried in the study¹ cited television news as their most important news source (7). People do use other forms of mass communications in Iran, such as telephone, cellular mobiles, the Internet, radio, and newspapers. Internet use is particularly on the rise (8). However, even though people in Iran use other forms of communication like the Internet and satellite dishes to connect with the outside world and catch up with political and world affairs, they frequently face severe crackdowns by the regime. Thus, state-controlled television remains the primary source of information for many Iranians (9). Empirical data have shown that television has impacted public opinion on human rights (10). For this research, which seeks to explore public perceptions of Iranians on human rights, television is a more appropriate medium for analysis.

The views of IRIB are concurrent with those of the Iranian regime. IRIB, as a whole, is used by the Iranian regime as a “broadcasting pulpit” (11). The pulpit or minbar is a place in the mosque where religious figures address or preach to the masses. Preaching has been a systematized and keen form of communication and interaction with the public for many centuries (12). It has been used to “inform,” “guide,” and “agitate” (11). Television, therefore, is a propaganda machine, a unique medium that delivers state messages nationwide. It is unique because, according to research, “television is essentially and fundamentally different from other forms of mass media” (13). Literacy is not a requirement for television viewing, unlike newspapers, magazines, and books. Unlike movies, television is free. Unlike radio, television combines pictures and sound. Mobility is not required. People of all ages can interact with television, and it is accessible and available to everyone (13). The interaction is one-way, however, which makes the study of television relatively easier. Some scholars argue that texts should not be studied in isolation but that images should also be analyzed (14). Thus, this research focuses on content analysis (CA) and multimodal critical discourse analysis (MCDA) to examine the Islamic Republic of Iran’s practices of news production using the international human rights law as the legal framework.

If the Iranian regime is found to abuse the principles of international human rights law for propaganda purposes, then this research intends to establish how it does it and how the results correlate with the Iranian migrants’ opinions on the subject.

Human Rights, Television, and the Iranian Public

Due to the nature of authoritarianism and the political climate in Iran, researching the Iranian public comes with certain challenges and inhibitions. The ethical issues associated with researching human subjects are so overbearing that they may negatively influence the study or halt it altogether. To safeguard the well-being of the participants but allow them freedom to express their opinions, recent Iranian migrants were chosen as the participants for this research. Another reason for this selection was the temporal dimension of their status. They were recent enough to remember what they watched on television yet not old enough to be part of the established Iranian diaspora.

The surveys and interviews discussed here were conducted between May 14 and August 11, 2015. Recent Iranian migrants residing in the United Kingdom and Canada were the focus group of this study. Based on the UK government’s statistical report on immigration, Iran was ranked second among nationalities applying for asylum in 2015 (15). In the same year, Iran was the fourth largest source of immigrants to Canada (16), according to The Canadian Magazine of Immigration. Recent Iranian immigrants in both the UK and Canada were selected randomly through nonprobability sampling, which did not guarantee that all recent immigrants had an equal chance of participating (17). For this research, recent immigrant refers to any Iranian individual who had immigrated to a destination country, in this case, Britain and Canada, within five years from the time of the interview and survey conductions. Both the Canadian and the UK governments consider an individual a newcomer until they become eligible to apply for citizenship after five years (18, 19).

A mixed method, which includes both qualitative and quantitative methods, was used to collect data from 101 individual migrants. Individuals were chosen based on particular characteristics to enable them to respond to the research questions appropriately and in the best way possible. The participants comprised of any migrant—political dissidents, economic migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees. The participants also included short- and long-term visitors from Iran. Except for being recent immigrants and having some knowledge of the news content on national television in Iran, there were no other criteria for individuals to be eligible to participate. Individuals from any religion, gender, ethnicity, or age over 18 could participate.

The Structure and Focus of the Book

Mixed methods were used in the research laid out in this book, including CA and MCDA, to explore the underlying features of international human rights norms as portrayed on Iranian television. These two methods were used not only to determine when and under what circumstances international human rights principles are presented in the n...