Culture Industry & Television in Iran (Case Study of “Mahe Asal (Honey Moon)” Program)

Introduction: Media materials and contents are one of mediations which provide interpretations on a society. Thus the programs of Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) like Mahe Asal (Honey Moon) are proper mediation to interpret and understand Iranian Society.  The question is; what characteristics of Iranian society have been reflected in Mahe Asal (Honey Moon)? This paper is to analyze the programming approach of IRIB, based on the culture industry theory. On the literature review, the approach of Frankfurt School toward modern capitalism, culture industry theory and their approach toward mass media, especially television has been described.
Method:  In this paper, according to the nature of the research problem, a qualitative method has been chosen. By following Adorno approach to analyze a popular TV program, the qualitative content analysis has been used. The research is focused on “Mahe Asal (Honey Moon)” Program which has been released during 2013 to 2018. To analyze the program by applying the theoretical or purposive sampling, the episodes of the mentioned program have been analyzed by qualitative content analysis. According to the research goals, the episodes of mentioned program produced in 2013 and 2018 were selected as research case studies. Every 60 episodes of programs released in the mentioned 2 years were analyzed. Every selected  programs were watched fully and their content were analyzed based on the selected method.
Finding:The main results of research include: misreporting the real needs (individualizing the structural problems), making the rationality instrumental, declining the human to the object level to achieve the goal, propagation of compromise and deferring to the economic situation (hailing and sentimentalizing the poverty) and commercializing ethic and religious values. The mentioned categories have been critically interpreted.
Results & Conclusion: The research results show that considering the spread of neoliberal and capitalism values in Iranian society and economy, the television despite alleging to criticize capitalism, but in fact is integrated with capitalism and consumerism values. Thus according to internal critique logic, the dominance of capitalism values on IRIB programs prevents it to realize its` goals such as turning into public university. So IRIB, especially the television organization has to produce TV Programs based on religious values and Just-based approaches which led to formation of Islamic Republic of Iran. These approaches are contradictory to capitalism approaches.