Abstract
This article investigates the influence of online communications platforms on Iranian journalists’ struggle for countering the restrictions, and achieving their journalistic ends. Based on 26 interviews with journalists working in the established media in Iran, it shows that social networking websites and mobile messaging applications are arenas of mobilization and leverage for journalists in this semi-authoritarian context. Online platforms function as sources of social and symbolic assets for journalists enabling them to make others see and think about an issue, and act on it, thus employ journalistic symbolic power. This article applies Bourdieu’s concepts of doxa, social capital, symbolic capital and symbolic power to explain, why and under what circumstances certain journalistic online strategies become operative. The findings offer insights into how new media affect power relations between journalists and the forces that restrict their practices and offer potentials for relatively more journalistic autonomy in a controlled media environment.
Highlights
Iranian media landscape includes different sectors with various forms of ownership and policies
The findings reveal that online communications platforms are the journalists’ sources of higher leverage on an issue by involving more actors in talking about the issue and acting on it
It sheds light on how Iranian journalists attempt to set the public agenda in light of the new potentials of the Internet, in a context where new media & society 23(7)
Summary
Iranian media landscape includes different sectors with various forms of ownership and policies. The Internet was introduced to Iran in 1993 (Rahimi, 2015). Online dissent activities started by the growth of conflict between the reformists and the conservatives, two main political factions, in the late 1990s, the Internet began to be deemed a threat to the government (Khiabany, 2008; Rahimi, 2008). The crackdown on critical print publications intensified, and the Internet, in particular, blogs, became a domain of expression for various groupings, including journalists (Michaelsen, 2015). In the late 1990s, there was a growth in online journalism, which was created in response to the backlash against reformist print publications (Michaelsen, 2015)
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