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A Consensual-Societal Regulatory Perspective: The Almost Collapse of Rule-based Regulation in the Iranian Audiovisual Media Sector

Institutions
Regulation
Internet
Comparative Perspective
Seyed Emamian
Sharif University of Technology
Seyed Emamian
Sharif University of Technology

Abstract

While the Iranian audiovisual media sector was constitutionally exempted from the huge privatization in early 2000s, almost a decade later it became ultimately open to private online media platforms, almost inevitably, due to widespread digitalization and the failure of constitutionally monopolized the state-owned herculean media complex, IRIB, in digital era. Institutionally, the Audiovisual Regulatory Authority (SATRA) was established to regulate the converging sector that was seen distinctive from either traditional TV channels or non-media digital platforms. However resulting from a few decades-long media monopoly, there was a clear lack of legal framework for regulating private audiovisual media platforms in Iran. Likewise, the heavily politicized media sector had fundamentally challenged the legitimacy of traditional media legislations. In response, SATRA deliberately adopted a consensual-societal regulatory perspective through establishing a huge social department applying a rather innovative social regulatory toolbox. The department aimed in framing the behavior of audiovisual platforms through stimulating social pressure and driving public expectation. Likewise adopting a regulation by awareness approach, it was regularly conducting comparative, mainly European, studies promoting international legitimacy and public demand for statutory regulation. Nevertheless, the history of the Iranian audiovisual regulation by no means went then unchallenged. Building upon almost 20 semi-structured interviews, this paper aims in providing an overview of the post-privatization Iranian regulatory landscape leading to the creation of SATRA. The study then addresses the institutional capacities as well as innovative regulatory instruments SATRA adopted, in its early stages, to attain a level of public legitimacy and societal consensus filling the regulatory gap derived from the absence of a technically adaptable and politically enforceable audiovisual media legal framework.