A Study on Barriers to Local Social Media Competition with International Social Media

Supporting local social media against foreigns’ along with blocking international social media are two main strategies of Islamic Republic of Iran in dealing with social media, which success in both of these strategies is questionable. This article is conducted based on ground research method or grounded theory, using focus group and content analysis of the interview to collect data. The research provided some suggestions for local social media to compete, besides identifying involved barriers. From the users’ perspective, local social media owners and policy-makers consider some reasons, including the regulation and special conditions for income generation as well as the lack of ethic diversity, of why foreign social media attract more users having some superiories such as network size and social capital attraction.