Good Iranian, Bad Iranian
Representations of Iran and Iranians in Time and Newsweek (1998–2009)
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7501667 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Sam Fayyaz (University of Massachusetts Amherst, corresponding author), Roozbeh Shirazi (0000-0002-9134-5754, University of Minnesota) |
| Year | 2013 |
| Volume | 46 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 53-72 |
| Publication date | 2013-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Iranian Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-0862 • E-ISSN: 1475-4819 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1080/00210862.2012.740899 |
| OpenAlex | W1988549610 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 10 |
| References cited | 7 |
This article analyzes the ways in which Iran and Iranians are represented in Western news media sources. Through detailed textual analysis of articles in Time and Newsweek between 1998 and 2009, it demonstrates that journalistic representations of Iran and Iranians are not simply efforts aimed at describing the real Iran, but rather form the basis of what Said refers to as a powerful “community of interpretation” that often reflects and reproduces certain xenophobic stereotypes of non-Western foreign subjects. While some shifts in Western media representations of Iranians have occurred in the thirty years since the revolution, the underlying ontological assumptions of these representations have remained remarkably durable. That is to say, the dominant representational discourse found in these newsmagazines depicts the political behavior of Iranians on the basis of essentialized notions of Persian and/or Islamic civilization, while very often emphasizing the taken for granted superiority of the West. Earlier Orientalist discourses focus on the difference of non-Western foreign subjects by denigrating them as fundamentally anti-modern and incapable of political, cultural and economic development without Western intervention. This article presents an unmistakable discursive pattern in American journalism whereby certain Iranians are incorporated into Western civilization by virtue of their embrace of a Western modernity
Art · Civilization · Epistemology · Islam · Linguistics · Literature · Modernity · Orientalism · Persian · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Western culture · Western thought · History · Islamic Studies and History · Law · Media Studies and Communication · Philosophy · Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence
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| Unique citing works | 10 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2016 - 2026 (11) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 10 |