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The Foregrounding of Homelessness in Iran by a Progressive Media

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Abolfazl Fateh*
Affiliation:
University of Oxford

Abstract

The case of “homelessness in Iran” presents empirical evidence to demonstrate “how a small media organization affects and changes social discourse.” The study investigates how the Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA) embodied the view of a news agency as having a role not only in the coverage of events, but also as an active agent of social change through discursive interventions. The process by which ISNA reconstructed homelessness and its empirical consequences is compatible with the five accepted stages labeled by Blumer. Homelessness represents the different ways in which ISNA has intervened in the social discourse in Iran: foregrounding a social issue, thematizing a discourse and problematizing social issues in order to open up a new kind of discourse.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The International Society for Iranian Studies 2013

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References

1 In Iran, during the Khatami era (1997–2005), ISNA (Iranian Student News Agency) emerged in 1999 as the second Iranian news agency. ISNA rapidly became one of the major sources of news, information and content in Iranian media; expanded poly-vocalism and gained broad recognition among Iranian media professionals and users. ISNA was a student-run organization (students mainly from low income families) that in name and some principles is similar to citizen journalism and in other principles follows traditional media.

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