Abstract:
Over the past half-century, Iran has undergone significant shifts in fertility behaviors, transitioning from large to smaller families due to cultural and social transformations. With the enactment of the Law on Population Rejuvenation and Family Support, the national media has played a crucial role in shaping public attitudes toward childbearing. This study employs Fairclough's three-stage discourse analysis framework to investigate how childbearing is represented in Iranian media, with a focus on television programs from 2020 to mid-2024. The findings reveal that a mono-discursive environment regarding childbearing dominates national media. This means that the national media predominantly and unilaterally emphasizes the importance and necessity of increasing fertility, presenting this discourse as the sole legitimate and desirable narrative to its audience. While this one-sided approach may influence the attitudes of certain segments of society in the short term, it could lead to audience resistance or indifference in the long term. Therefore, it is recommended that national media, taking into account the diversity of perspectives and needs within society, adopt a more varied and balanced range of discourses on this issue, grounded in specialized and more comprehensive viewpoints, to achieve a more sustainable impact on audiences and society as a whole.
Machine summary:
Research Article Discourse Analysis of National Media Regarding Childbearing From 2020 to June 2024 Farideh Shams Ghahfarokhi 1* Abstract Considering the changes in the country's macro policies and the passage of the Youthful Population and Family Support Law, as well as considering the important role that media can play in shaping and changing people's attitudes, this article examines the role of national media in this field.
According to Article 28 of the Law on Family Protection and Population Youthfulness, the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), the Islamic Propagation Organization, non-governmental public institutions and organizations, municipalities, and village administrations are obligated to take necessary actions such as producing and distributing films, series, commercial advertisements, and organizing festivals and exhibitions in order to raise awareness regarding the positive and valuable aspects of timely and easy marriage, having multiple children in the family, strengthening and supporting maternal and spousal roles, protecting the consolidation of the family, and countering content contrary to general population policies and the side effects of using various contraceptive methods, as well as the dangerous medical, psychological, cultural, and social side effects of abortion.
Considering interdiscursive composition is essential because it may show how different and (sometimes contradictory) discourses and interests can be expressed together in a single text (Mbisamakoro, 2014) In Iran, in the years following overpopulation and the population explosion, under the influence of social and economic changes occurring in the country and the growth of individual awareness due to the expansion of literacy among various segments of society and the increased use of media, a new demographic discourse was formed.
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