Challenges in policy making for digital content industry development in Iran

Today, the digital content industry is one of the sources of wealth creation and economic growth in developed countries. Nevertheless, despite the fact that Iran has a rich literary and cultural tradition and other requirement, the development of this industry has been overlooked by the policy makers. The purpose of this study is to investigate the barriers to the development of the content industry in Iran. This research aims to be an applied paper with descriptive methodology which has conducted in two qualitative and quantitative phases. Accordingly, in the qualitative phase, research indicators were extracted based on the literature review and semi-structured interviews with 12 digital content industry specialists and then were categorized with the participation of experts. In the quantitative phase, the indicators were validated using factor analysis (first and second-order) and with the participation of 135 professionals in the digital content industry. The paper concludes that the development of the digital content industry is impaired by the lack of the access to science and technology and necessary infrastructure. Moreover, the industry is not supported by the government and that requires action planning.