Iran's Media Diplomacy (IRIB TV1 News 21:00) toward the Islamic World, Europe and America in the Third Decade of the Islamic Revolution (1997-2007)

The media of every country in the world not only supports the kind of diplomacy that a country pursues but also sometimes become international agents and exert influence on public opinion both at home and abroad. This study tries to answer the following question: How has been Iran’s media diplomacy toward the Islamic world (Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Palestine, United Arab Emirates and Egypt), Europe (France, Britain, Germany, Italy and Russia), and America over the last ten years – that is, the third decade of the revolution. In order to answer this question, 360 news items of the day, sampled via systematic sampling, were studied through content analysis. To this end, five categories with the greatest influence on Iran’s diplomacy were identified in order of importance. The five categories are: politics, economy, culture, society and religion. All the news items were evaluated and categorized according to these categories to represent the emergence of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s media discourse via Iran’s national media network.