A Short Note on "Censorship and the Islamic Republic"

Two Modes of Regulatory Measures for Media in Iran" by Babak Rahimi

Reza Shirmarz 

Babak Rahimi is Associate Professor of Communication, Culture and Religion at the Department of Literature, University of California. His essay was published in the Middle East Journal (Vol. 69, No. 3, pp. 358-378), in Summer 2015.

This essay takes a general look at the phenomenon of censorship in Iran and focuses on the reactive and proactive regulatory measures in order not only to take the flow of information under control but also "the strategic production of discourses that exert discipline and order over networks of communication and the construction of knowledge favorable to the stability of state power." In order to clarify the meaning of power and order in the context of the production of new social control forms, Rahimi refers to the Foucault's descriptions of how power "confers order upon reality" and takes the society under its control. He argues the fact the information produced by the government affects the public knowledge, the media production as well as regulating, manipulating and reshaping the thoughts, beliefs and feelings of Iranians. 

The regime uses the reactive regulatory measures such as shutting down the newspapers, publishing companies, restricting and banning the digital networks, limiting the scope of activities of theaters, cinemas, cultural organizations, etc. through the existing governmental bodies (e.g. Ershad) which are based on religious-ideological values and beliefs of the ongoing regime to "aim to regulate media content" and therefore impose limits on the flow of information and control it in various possible ways, whereas through the proactive measures such as the promotion of new media technologies, growth of education centers, etc. it tries to produce "new media content" and make the non-governmental intellectual content look unimportant and therefore marginalized. It is paramount to know that the proactive regulatory measures in Iran has sometimes a contradictory nature since the government tends to limit the public access to new media content for example the Internet to different degrees depending upon the political milieu. Rahimi gives several somehow detailed examples for each type of measures. 

Rahimi believes that these two regulatory measures aim ultimately to prove the domination of the regime over the fabric of the society as well as Iranian artists, writers, journalists, etc. "through practices of discipline and surveillance." Another interesting phenomenon that Rahimi discusses about is the "institutionalization of national intranet" which is a "closed information network" and is built based on North Korea's intranet. He believes that the state intranet uses both reactive and proactive measures to avoid the import and export of any sort of information which threatens the existence of the authoritarian regime. The adversarial aspect of proactive measures is another concept which is defined by the Author, which refers to the "soft war" used by the Iranian authorities all the time especially over the last few years. In fact, the Iranian regime uses and abuses any sort of animosity with the western countries not only to take the flow of information under control but also continue to dewesternize the Iranian society through "misinformation, spreading rumors, hacktivism, and psychological tactics" and create a collective anti-western consciousness to strengthen the pillars of the theocratic ideological state.