An Analysis of the Modes of Representing protests of January 2018, on 20:30 news section of Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB)

The protests of January 2018 are the samples of the emergence of new social movements in Iran. The characteristics of these movements are being non-ideological, lack of single leadership, dispersion, having a network structure among the members and using modern communication techniques on cyberspace platform. These protests travelled to dozens of points in Iran in a short time and led IRIB to react within two days of the start of the protests on 20:30 news section. According to the constructivist approach in representation theory, the media narratives of events are a representation within their ideological and discursive contexts rather than an objective account of reality, as the representation of the protests in the media can lead to the control and guidance of the protests, and increase the trust and reference nature of that medium. The study tried to examine the representation of the involved parties, internal and external officials, as well as the demands made at these gatherings in 20:30 news section one month after the start of the events, using the representation theory. The study used qualitative content analysis methods.This method section based on John Fisk's model in the study of visual texts. The combined model is presented for text analysis, which is a combination of the models of Selbi, Cadouri, Barthes, Fairclough and Van Dijk. The results of the qualitative section indicated that the image of the protesters in the most popular news section of IRIB is accompanied by approached presenting the protesters as “others” organized by enemies.