Analysis of media representation of relations between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Resistance Front (with emphasis on content analysis of BBC Farsi and Iran International news 1398-1401 AH)

Taherkhani, Fatemeh

Analysis of media representation of relations between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Resistance Front (with emphasis on content analysis of BBC Farsi and Iran International news 1398-1401 AH)

Document Type : Original Article

Author

Fatemeh Taherkhani

Assistant Professor, Department of Political Philosophy, Institute of Political Thought, Revolution and Islamic Civilization, Institute of Human Sciences, Tehran, Iran.

Abstract

This research analyzes the representation of the Resistance Front in foreign Persian-language media. To this end, Iran International and BBC Persian were examined on two platforms, Instagram and Twitter, during the years 2019 to 2023. The main research problem was to discover the discursive strategies and themes employed by these media against the interests of the Islamic Republic of Iran. For this purpose, Ruth Wodak's discourse-historical approach was utilized, with its emphasis on the two core concepts of "strategy" and "theme." At the level of discursive strategies, five strategies—"nomination," "predication," "argumentation," "perspectivation," and "intensification/mitigation"—were identifiable in the content of both media. Additionally, five main themes in the representation of Iran's regional policy were identified: "financial-economic," "security-strategic," "peace and regional cooperation," "legal-judicial," and "normative-humanitarian."The research findings confirm that these two media, employing the aforementioned strategies and themes, have advanced four strategies under the super-strategy of delegitimization: first, authorization through the portrayal of institutional weakness and the othering of the establishment; second, moral evaluation through dehumanization and the concealment of public hatred towards Israel; third, rationalization through the induction of regional isolation and a people-establishment divide; and fourth, mythopoesis through modeling military attacks and psychological operations. The innovation of this research lies in the integration of Wodak's framework of discourse analysis with Van Leeuwen's model of delegitimization. The application of this framework in a comparative analysis of two media outlets and two different platforms, with a high volume of textual data, represents another aspect of the research's novelty.

Keywords

Resistance Front

Discourse-Historical Analysis

Strategy

Theme

BBC Persian

Iran International

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