Blogistan

The Internet and Politics in Iran

Annabelle Sreberny, Gholam Khiabany

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780857731418
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Islamic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

The protests unleashed by Iran's disputed presidential election in June 2009 brought the Islamic Republic's vigorous cyber culture to the world's attention. Iran has an estimated 700, 000 bloggers, and new media such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube were thought to have played a key role in spreading news of the protests. The internet is often celebrated as an agent of social change in countries like Iran, but most literature on the subject has struggled to grasp what this new phenomenon actually means. How is it different from print culture? Is it really a new public sphere? Will the Iranian blogosphere create a culture of dissidence, which eventually overpowers the Islamist regime? In this groundbreaking work, the authors give a flavour of contemporary internet culture in Iran and analyse how this new form of communication is affecting the social and political life of the country. Although they warn against stereotyping bloggers as dissidents, they argue that the internet is changing things in ways which neither the government nor the democracy movement could have anticipated.
"Blogistan" offers both a new reading of Iranian politics and a new conceptual framework for understanding the politics of the internet, with implications for the wider Middle East, China and beyond.

The Internet in Iran: Development and Control

CRITICAL ANALYSES of the internet in Iran face two theoretical positions, each loaded with a sense of historical inevitability. On the one hand, we have accounts of the ‘digital exceptionalism' of the internet that overstate the role of new technologies in economy and society and suggest a decisive break with the past. The key assumption in this scenario is that the internet changes the very nature of social relations and promises a future of democratic participation. If this account regards technology as the dynamic force of society, its so-called opposite, ‘Islamic exceptionalism', proposes that it is Islam that acts as the determining factor and the sole signifier in the realm of culture and communication. In this scenario, the totalities of production and social relations are declared an inadequate starting point for analysis of media and this paves the path for epistemological nativism which offer an all-encompassing, never-changing and uniform ‘Islam' as the basis for the realities of communication in the region (Khiabany, 2010).

The Islamic Republic was established in 1979 after a rapid popular mobilization that produced a revolutionary outcome. Thus, all developments in relation to the internet and cyberspace have occurred within a highly politicised post-revolutionary environment with Shi'ite Islam as the ideology of the dominant theocratic state. Yet the central issue about the development of new media in Iran is not the obvious and crude divide between a ‘traditional' state and ‘modern' technology because that very state has, and many individual clergy have, adopted rapidly to the use of new information technologies. There are two more subtle lines of tension running through internet development in Iran. The first is the centralising state's desire to control expression in a ‘new technology' environment that is highly conducive to widespread and popular participation. The Iranian state has been concerned about this issue for over a century and internet has just become the newest site of contestation and the latest technology to offer an alternative mode of communications to those directly controlled by the state.

The second is the centralising state's desire to orchestrate and manage the slow development of the private sector and the inhibitions placed on entrepreneurial ICT (information and communication technologies) activity in a field that has produced Net millionaires in other parts of the world. The rapid spread of new communications technologies exemplifies Iran's uneven development as well as the contradictory role of the state.

Despite these two fault lines, the recent period has seen the rapid emergence of the communication industry in Iran as one of the fastest growing economic sectors and various uses of ‘new media' now constitute one of the most dynamic and vibrant politicocultural spaces. Beside the expansion of Iranian media channels, popular desire for access to informal channels of communication and for greater cultural consumption show in the increasing usage of mobile technology and the internet as well as the astonishing rise and popularity of weblogs which have become a particular site of struggle.

Newspaper kiosk, Tehran

This chapter locates the expansion of the internet in Iran in its wider social context and examines the realities of digital divides and the fact that Iran is lagging behind some of its richer regional neighbours. By looking at the expansion of telecommunication facilities and infrastructure, it maps the modernising policies of the Iranian state and the emerging contradictions of its development process. We suggest that limited access and usage only tells part of a more complex story of communicative experiences in Iran. Internet use has started to challenge the state monopoly not only over long-distance telephone calls but also as a channel of political and cultural communication. Private capital is challenging the monopoly of the state as government policies slowly adapt to the marketisation and privatisation of the communication sector, while the broader national and international contexts make for an intriguing mix of internet and media developments.

Although the tools and technologies are universal and while the general development of the internet cannot be understood outside the broader operation of capital and state, the internet as a whole also cannot be understood outside of place. In the age of ‘globalisation' and ‘transnationalism', it is worth remembering that the politics and political actions, nevertheless, do take place in concrete ‘places'. This is not to deny the broader concerns, and the place itself cannot be understood without reference to broader processes and how people are united by common histories, concerns and language. Therefore, as Masserat Amir-Ebrahimi (2005) rightly observes:

In spite of claims to a ‘universal' language, the internet is a new public space/sphere grounded in particular socio-cultural aspects of everyday life. Its cultural significance varies considerably from place to place according to people's diverse experiences, lacks, needs and aspirations. In democratic societies, cyberspace is often viewed as an ‘alter' space of information, research and leisure that functions in a parallel or complementary fashion to existing public spaces and institutions. In countries where public spaces are controlled by traditional or restrictive cultural forces, however, the internet can take on varied signification. In Iran, where the public sphere is closely monitored and regulated by traditional and state forces, the internet has become a means to resist the restrictions imposed on these spaces. For people living in these countries, especially marginalized groups such as youth and women, the internet can be a space more ‘real' than everyday life.

The first section of this chapter examines aspects of digital divides in relation to current debates about internationalising media and internet studies. It then presents aspects of the expansion of the Iranian communication industries and their rapid modernisation in recent years. It then examines the contradictions in the development of the internet in Iran, its competing interests and policies.

But first, some more detailed context is necessary.

A Brief Reprise of Contemporary Iranian History: Producing an Islamic Revolution

The Islamic Republic of Iran was, and remains, a contradictory entity. Brought into being in 1979 by a popular revolution that included diverse class and ideological components, the reins of state power were rapidly Islamicised to produce the world's only theocracy, with a velayat-e-faqih (supreme jurisprudent) as the religious head of an Islamic polity. Khomeini was, of course, the first, followed by Khamenei, the extant (2010) unelected leader.

However, alongside this system of religious leadership decided through the acclaim of the clergy exists a parallel modern political system of elections and formal political roles. All Iranians over 18 including women, who were enfranchised in 1963, elect a president as well as representatives to the Majles, the parliament. This political process is orchestrated by the over-arching Guardian Council that vets political groups and individuals and makes knowledge of Islam a strong criterion for inclusion. The general enfranchisement, growth of political campaigning, strength of political debate and public eagerness to participate mean that many analysts (Ashraf Ahmad and Ali Banuazizi, 2001; Said Amir Arjomand, 2000; Charles Kurzman 2001; Ali Ansari, 2006) acknowledge the dual political system and the existence of democratising elements in the polity. Iran certainly enjoys a much wider political field of participation and expression than most other regimes in the region, an argument made repeatedly in the face of possible US incursions. Rakshan BaniEtemad's powerful film Roozegar-e Ma, Our Time (2002) is a vivid exploration of contemporary political desires and imaginative possibilities, when even young women feel able to run for the presidency (although not formally allowed). There have been long-standing and deep internal struggles for power between ‘liberal reformers' and ‘conservatives', between the appointed and elected elements, which became particularly acute after Khatami's reformist presidency and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's election in 2005. In 2009, it was precisely the re-investment of energy in the democratic process, stimulated by televised debates, rallies and all the insignia of political campaigning, which produced such a stunned response, as if the very processes of participation had been finally rendered a sham.

Beyond this internal power struggle, other issues are also relevant. Iran experienced a bitter eight-year war with Iraq that produced colossal death, injury and destruction, including missile attacks on urban areas, and this remains a process not fully absorbed or worked through inside the Islamic Republic. One of the consequences of the war was the elevation of security over all other public matters. Another was the elevation of war veterans to social heroes and their rapid ascension up various socioeconomic ladders, including being parachuted into university places often without appropriate schooling and background. Many have subsequently become key figures in educational institutions and companies, thus assuring regime control and monitoring of these organisations. The quiet rise of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), also known as Pasdaran, as political and economic beneficiaries of revolutionary mobilization and state privatization, is part of the same process. In September 2009, the IRGC acquired 51% of Telecommunication Company of Iran minutes after the company was privatised in a $5bn deal, the biggest in Iranian economic history. It is now estimated that the Guards control around one third of Iran's economy through various charitable foundations, subsidiaries and trusts.

The Islamic Republic has also experienced chronic economic crisis from its inception. It inherited financial problems from the previous government that were exacerbated by the devastating Iraq war and the economic liberalisation thereafter (Parvin Alizadeh, 2000). Indeed, probably one of the clinching reasons for the election of Ahmadinejad in 2005 was his promise to look after the poorer sections of Iranian society, including those in the provinces. But he has not delivered. Despite rising oil prices, which reached over $140 barrel in the summer of 2008, their highest ever, inflation is higher (estimated to be around 35 per cent), so that even banks offering savers interest rates of 20 per cent lag well behind. Housing – especially in Tehran – is unaffordable for many, with scores of properties lying empty, and the gap between rich and poor is opening wider, despite the rhetoric of the revolution to support the mostazzafin over the mostakbarin. Hojatol-eslam Rafsanjani, the second most powerful man in the entire history of the Islamic Republic, is one of the richest men in Iran, showing the embrace of capitalist economics by Islamic practitioners. An often-repeated nostrum in Tehran in the autumn of 2008 was that every ayatollah has an oil well in his pocket, ‘chah-e naft to jib darand'.

And yet the Islamic Republic manifests some unexpected and progressive policies in certain areas. There are needle exchange programmes for heroin users, advanced IVF treatments, readily accessible transgender surgery (although that is widely seen as way to literally erase homosexuality) and payment for kidney organ donations that maintains a supply of organs (and there is global debate about the ethics of such practices). However, there is also a lack of clear and coherent policies in other areas, including rather weak provision of welfare benefits and unemployment. Iran has a very youthful demographic, over 70 per cent of the population being under 30, that produces considerable pressure on university places, training and employment, yet its provision is inadequate to the demand. Migration into Tehran is high and not readily absorbed. The traffic in the capital is nightmarish (and poor in other cities also) and the pollution dangerous, with the media publicising health warnings on days with particularly poor air quality and the government frequently having to resort to closing schools. Thus, less than three decades after massive political and ideological change, a lengthy war and a myriad of unresolved social and economic issues, Iranians experience multiple challenges in everyday life as well as a volatile political atmosphere in which they struggle to be heard through print, broadcast or new media.

The diffusion of internet access and the adoption of new information technologies have to be seen within this context, which its users both interrogate and exacerbate.

The International Turn and Internet Studies

Any serious engagement with the current debate about internationalising media theory and internet studies undoubtedly needs to go beyond technological determinism and dismantle many of the pointless and simplified binary construction and ‘either/or' versions of media, technology and culture. Downing (1996) helped to raise the alarm about how our knowledge of the media field is essentially based on experience and examples from the West, mainly from the USA, so now we witness a growing concern over ‘Western bias' in media theory and its negative, parochial impact (McQuail, 2001; Curran and Park, 2000). Slowly the work of communication scholars from different regions other than Western Europe and the USA is coming to the fore, revealing some much needed comparative analysis and a burgeoning literature focusing on examples of media and society outside the Anglo-American experience. However, internationalising media theory should be and should mean more than a collection of articles on the state of media and communication in various parts of the world. While stepping out of a specific and hegemonic geographical area is important, it is not adequate or ‘de-Westernising' as such. What is being ‘de-Westernised', on what basis and why remain significant questions that need scrutiny and critical examination. While media theory is in desperate need to renew itself and break out of its geographical confines of the ‘West', it also needs to move away from the culturalist assumptions that have entrapped much of the debate about international communication, including modernisation theory. We must avoid simply inverting the tradition/modern dichotomy so that we overvalue the ‘traditional' and line up the commercial, rootless, banal and pre-packaged ‘western' products against the ‘authentic', ‘organic' and deeply rooted cultures of the ‘east'.

‘Internet Studies' also throws up a number of further questions and debates about the entanglement between media and society. Two significant issues revolve around the problem of access/social inequality and the nature of political participation and whether the new media has solved, or is capable of solving, some of the old problems in these two areas. Undoubtedly the notion of ‘internet' itself remains problematic, not least because the singularity of the ‘internet', as Livingstone (2005) reminds us, suppresses the diversity of technologies imbedded in ‘new media', not to mention the differential social and geographic access and the different policies and responses it has generated across the world.

A key concern and a fruitful line of research developed in recent years has been about ‘digital divides' and differential access to new technologies. Moving beyond the simple statistics at both the national and international levels, the idea has evolved from a ‘singular' digital divide to include questions of the quality of access, models of engagement and the diversity of content. Communication technologies by themselves cannot solve political, social, cultural and economic discrepancies within societies, nor can they be regarded as the engines of history. They do not teach literacy, are not education in themselves and cannot resolve the lack of clean water or electricity or food. Technologies are developed in historical societies and as such carry all the marks of their historical moment in their shapes, designs, functions and the very fact that they are sold in the marketplace as commodities. The debate about digital divide provokes a set of questions: What is exactly the digital divide? Is there only one? Who is excluded and by what/whom? To what extent is this divide distinctly ‘digital'?

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Table of contents

• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of tables
• Introduction
• 1 The Internet in Iran: Development and Control
• 2 The Politics of and in Blogging
• 3 Web of Control and Censorship: State and Blogosphere in Iran
• 4 Gender, Sexuality and Blogging
• 5 Becoming Intellectual: The Blogistan and Public Political Space in the Islamic Republic
• 6 English Language/Diasporic Blogs: Articulating the Inside and the Outside
• 7 Journalism, Blogging and Citizen Journalism
• 8 The Summer of 2009
• Notes
• Bibliography