Hegemony and Resistance: Media Politics in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The article examines the prevalence of hegemony and resistance in media politics in Iran. The Islamic Republic in Iran appears to be one of the most totalizing, hegemonic revolutionary systems of contemporary history with its apparently ready-made political ideology. Yet closer examination reveals the immense difficulties in ideological socialization and political institutionalization that have occurred inside the Islamic Republic. Specifically, the authors show the considerable ideological work that has occurred in restructuring and reshaping the broadcast media into a more Islamic mold. Yet at the same time, the authors wish to show that this very process has to confront a pre-existing cultural environment--with a particular organizational culture, set of trained personnel, and already formed cultural habits--and thus encounters many contradictions and itself produces many resistances. What such a perspective implies is that there is much more politics, specifically around cultural issues in Iran than the simple vertical power models acknowledge.