Iranian Media During Reza khan Era: The Idea of Iran-Shahr and Legitimization of Pahlavi Dynasty

During the reign of First Pahlavi, the Iranian press have been used as a means of propaganda by the government in order to fabricate the righteousness and legitimacy for the Pahlavi Dynasty and embarked on generating the idea of Iranshar (Iranian Statehood) with the emphasizing on promoting the nationalistic tendencies towards Ancient Iran. This article tries to explore the role of the press under supervision of intellectual and elites who were aligned with regime and tries to answer this question that how they attempted to make a new identity for Iranian society. It is argued in this article that these intellectuals and journalists were supposed to transfer the values of western civilization to Iranian society and at the same time try to deepen the nationalistic spirit and historical tendencies of Iranians. There was a kind of paradox in this attempt which wanted to emphasize on both modernity and tradition at the same time. The article concludes that due to this paradoxical approach the whole policy somehow failed.