Iran's Nuclear Crisis and the Discourse of Iranophobia in the media

پژوهش نامه ایرانی سیاست بین الملل

Article 7, Volume 11, Issue 2 - Serial Number 22, March 2023, Pages 161-186   

Document Type: Original Article

DOI: 10.22067/irlip.2022.21525.0

Author

Arash Raeisinejad^*

Assistant Professor Dept of International Relations Faculty of Law and Political Sciences University of Tehran

Abstract

Iran’s Nuclear Program (INP) has attracted many eyes and thoughts. While much ink has been spilled on its evolution and its impact on the international security and the middle-eastern politics, it seems there has been a theoretical void in the explanation of this multi-dimensional crisis. Such an unfortunate poverty is no more obvious than in the framing INP by the media. In fact, the impacts of media on conflicts and crisis in general, and on INP in particular, has been recently devalued. Thus, a voyage of the connections of the media framing and INP has been so far intact. The present study is an attempt to give a historical narrative on how the media have framed the trajectory of INP. We will accomplish this mission by locating the impacts of media on INP within an examination of the larger historical context. In this framework, the proposed work will undertake tracing the history of the ebbs and flows within the media—i.e., CNN and Fox News— coverage of INP, explaining how media covered INP. On this reading, the present work is a historiography. It provides a theoretical plot to narrate a story, a story of the history of INP through the lens of media.

Keywords

"Iran's Nuclear Crisis"; "Media"; "Framing"; "CNN"; "Fox News"

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