The Analytical Model of BBC and Radio Farda’s Media Policy with an Emphasis on the 2019 Gasoline Crisis
Keywords:
Virtual Space, Social Media, Soft War, Gasoline Price Hike, Protest Victims, Agenda-SettingAbstract
Decoding the media coverage strategies of opposition media outlets regarding the rival discourses of the Islamic Revolution is the objective of this study. The sudden announcement of gasoline price increases in Iran on November 15, 2019, triggered a wave of protests. Consequently, BBC Persian and Radio Farda news websites, aiming to launch a media offensive against the Islamic Republic of Iran, published 744 news reports on their websites within a 48-day period. The primary research question is why BBC Persian and Radio Farda played an extensive role in providing real-time coverage of the protests against the gasoline price hike in Iran. To achieve the research objective, the content analysis method was employed. The main research hypothesis posits that the strategy of highlighting challenges in Iran was adopted to gradually distance the public from the government in the long term. The findings indicate that these news websites, after identifying the challenges within Iranian society, utilized agenda-setting and framing techniques to disproportionately amplify the incidents in Iran.
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Copyright (c) 2025 Ali Zakeri (Author); Masoud Motalebi (Corresponding Author); Abdolreza Bay (Author)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
