336 Asian Politics & Policy—Volume 7, Issue 2—2015

Karlsson, Rasmus, & Symons, Jonathan. (2014). Scalability and realist climate insights. Weather,
Climate, and Society, 6, 289–292.
Lee, Jae-Seung. (2013). Low carbon green growth and climate change governance in South Korea.
In David Held, Charles Roger, & Eva-Maria Nag (Eds.), Climate governance in the developing
world (pp. 91–112). Cambridge: Polity Press.
Mathews, John A. (2012). Green growth strategies—Korean initiatives. Futures, 44(8), 761–769.
MB’s Green Growth turns out to be fake. (2012, June 6). The Hankyoreh [Editorial], p. 31. Retrieved
from http://www.hani.co.kr/arti/opinion/editorial/536451.html.
Olivier, Jos G. L., Janssens-Maenhout, Greet, Muntean, Marilena, & Peters, Jeroen A. H. W.
(2013). Trends in global CO2 emissions: 2013 report. The Hague: PBL Netherlands, 64 pp.
Retrieved from http://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/news_docs/pbl-2013-trends-in-global-co2-emis-
sions-2013-report-1148.pdf.
Reaching emissions reduction target should be a matter of survival. (2013, February 27). The Hankyoreh
[Editorial], p. 31. Retrieved from http://www.hani.co.kr/arti/opinion/editorial/575811.html.
Socolow, Robert. H., & Glaser, Alexander. (2009). Balancing risks: Nuclear energy & climate
change. Daedalus, 138(4), 31–44.
Yun, Sun-Jin, Ku, Dowan, Park, Nyuen-Bae, & Han, Joon. (2012). A comparative analysis of South
Korean newspaper coverage on climate change: Focusing on conservative, progressive, and
economic newspapers. Development & Society, 41, 201–228.

Web Sources
The Chosun Ilbo: http://www.chosun.com/
The Hankyoreh: http://www.hani.co.kr/
The Kyunghyang Shinmun: http://www.khan.co.kr/

Rasmus Karlsson
Senior Lecturer, Department of Political Science, Umeå University, Sweden

Hee-Yoon Kim
Graduate Student, Department of U-PEACE, Graduate School of International
and Area Studies, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Republic of Korea

Internet Censorship in Rouhani’s Iran: The “Wooden Sword”

On May 17, 2014, speaking at the Communication and Information Technology

Festival, the fourth of its kind in Iran to promote indigenous technologies, Has-
san Rouhani, the incumbent Iranian president, declared that the days of one-
way message distribution through loudspeakers and tribunes has come to end
(ISNA, 2015).1 In the information age, he argued, the Internet should be seen as
an opportunity to promote Iran and its Islamic identity. While defending the
necessity of social media sites in the country as means for progress, conse-
quently receiving more "likes" on his highly popular Facebook page, Rouhani
argued for smarter ways to tackle potential “moral” threats caused by the Inter-
net, comparing the existing Internet regulations to a “wooden sword”—ineffec-
tive and pointless (Mehr News, 2013).
Since his landslide election victory in 2013 that saw the moderate-pragmatic
cleric-politician succeed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Rouhani, who ran on a cam-
paign promise to lessen Internet censorship, has battled a number of state agen-
cies to reform the country’s Internet policy. The conflict over the future of
Internet regulation has revealed deep tensions between factions of the Islamic
Republic and also new opportunities for the development of new media
 Media Reviews 337

technologies in a country that has one of the highest rates of Internet users in
the Middle East.2 What lies ahead, however, is less about the impact of censor-
ship and more about the interface between people and technology harnessed to
create new forms of civic associations and distinct digital publics that transcend
state control over the media sphere.

Internet Censorship Under Rouhani

With the 2009 disputed elections that saw the rise of a new opposition,
known as the “Green movement,” certain factions within the Islamic Repub-
lic—in particular factions linked to the intelligence-paramilitary complex—took
serious note of how new media technologies have become embedded in the
everyday life of Iranians across class, gender, and ethnic lines. The protester’s
creative and collective use of social media, mobile, and satellite TV to express
political contention introduced a new understanding of Internet as a distinct
form of activism with organizational capacities and subservice performances
built around repertoires and symbols for political change. A new era of digital
activism had begun.
The postelection period, however, also marked a new period of Internet cen-
sorship, which has been a fixed feature of Iran’s policy in regulating the new
media since its introduction in mid-1990s (Akhavan, 2012; Rahimi, 2008, 2011).
The adoption of increasingly complex monitoring technologies, especially on
social media sites, in addition to expansion of the filtering system or severely
slowing down of the Internet during major public events (like the 2013 presi-
dential elections) underscored the growing fear of the security-minded factions
shaken by the protests. The new securitized environment was articulated in the
discourse of “soft war,” which the Supreme Leader described as a subversive
means to create an ambience of “sedition” in which all cultural practices,
including the Internet, would carry the potential to be manipulated by foreign
adversaries to overthrow the Islamic Republic.3 The most belligerent agencies
in charge of “soft war” counterattack are those who maintain close ties with the
security-intelligence apparatus and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
The 2010 establishment of the “Iranian cyber army” to combat “corrupt” Inter-
net sites serves as an example of new security institution building measures to
manage new media.
Since 2009, two significant developments have marked the expansion of
Internet censorship. First, the creation of Iran’s Virtual Crime Law (VCL),
passed by the parliament in May 2009 and the establishment of the Commis-
sion to Determine the Instances of Criminal Content (CDICC), centralized the
institution in charge of monitoring illegal Internet content. The VCL marked
the most systematic attempt to effectively filter the Internet. Second, the 2012
creation of the Supreme Council of Virtual Space, charged with the manage-
ment of the nation’s cyber policies, signified the increasing centralization of
state institutions to coordinate policy and effectively control online activities.
The establishment of the agency also marked a significant development
aimed at reducing mostly economic costs caused by Internet censorship and
also prevent circumventions, especially with the mushrooming of Virtual Pri-
vate Networks since 2009 (Ball & Dehghan, 2013; Esfandiari, 2011).4 Internet
338 Asian Politics & Policy—Volume 7, Issue 2—2015

circumvention is in particular the most problematic as 69% of Iranian Internet

users use circumvention technologies to bypass the state-imposed filtering
system (France 24, 2014).
Ironically, the same year when the committee was created, Ayatollah Khame-
nei also launched his Facebook page, where speeches, sermons, and prayers by
the Supreme Leader are frequently posted (Dehghan, 2012). In fact, by 2012
numerous pro-regime individuals and groups had joined Facebook to carve out
new social media spaces of interaction. What emerged as social media was now
an accepted, though not legally recognized, media domain for communication
among Iranian officials and their supporters.
With the 2013 presidential elections, Rouhani not only spread hope among
many Iranians for improving the economy and also lessening diplomatic ten-
sions over Iran’s controversial nuclear program but also raised the possibility of
reducing Internet censorship. In fact, Rouhani’s campaign not only talked about
greater online freedom but also considerably relied on the Internet for electoral
activities and campaigning. Rouhani’s “Internet committee,” one of the best
organized in the 2013 elections, used the Internet for polling and data gathering;
the committee also sought to promote political discussion in social media to
mobilize voters on the day of elections, an effective measure that considerably
contributed to his victory.5
After the elections, Rouhani incorporated social media into his new cabinet.
As key figures in the administration like Mahmoud Vaezi, the head of the Com-
munications Ministry, opened Facebook and Twitter accounts, they signaled a
new era of governance in the form of social network strategies as public policy.6
During the nuclear negotiations, Iran’s top diplomat, Mohammad Javad Zarif,
would communicate and report on the talks through his highly popular Face-
book account, where both supporters and opponents would debate the diplo-
matic process. When in February 2014, the Islamic Republic of Iran
Broadcasting (IRIB), run by conservatives close to the Supreme Leader, canceled
coverage of a live prime-time interview with the president due to the inter-
viewer’s hardline positions, Rouhani went on the social media to report the
decision to cancel the televised live discussion. He was later allowed to do the
live interview with his own choice of the interviewer. In another remarkable
incident, in May 2014, the CDICC faced a major challenge when Rouhani and
his Communications Minister, Mahmoud Vaezi attempted to veto the Commit-
tee’s decision to block WhatsApp, a popular app among Iranians who increas-
ingly use smart phones for social activities (Khodabakhshi, 2014). The move
revealed an unprecedented tension within the Islamic Republic over how to
best manage the changing social media landscape, a tension that most likely
will continue into the end of Rouhani’s first term presidency.
Despite Rouhani’s push for reform since his time in office, the Internet cen-
sorship has become smarter and more centralized. This is largely since the pres-
ident does not have control over Internet policy, but also because the electoral
defeat of conservative factions in the 2013 elections has heightened fear in favor
of heavy monitoring of new media as a potential site for dissident activities. In
many ways, growing Internet restrictions seem to complement what appears to
be the nationalization of the Internet or the employment of legal and technologi-
cal means to create a domestic information network for national consumption
 Media Reviews 339

(Al-Jazeera, 2012). While global Internet will still be available in parallel with
the national Internet, the formation of the domestic information network is
meant to encourage millions of Iranians to access unfiltered and high-speed
Internet designed and produced by the state. Following the Chinese model of
proactive measures, the move is indirectly aimed at promoting government
sanctioned Internet in order to decrease the popularity of Facebook, Twitter,
and other social media sites. The nationalization of the Internet also has the
objective of promoting domestic economy and technological developments
within a more secured and better-monitored Internet domain.

Internet as Social Capital

Despite these measures, the Internet continues to grow in Iran, and not just as
a contentious space for political activism, but also more importantly as a social
domain, where daily life intermingles with the market and the state. Internet and
various multimedia technologies have developed within small and large busi-
nesses, schools, hospitals, banks, government agencies, and even road transporta-
tion, where regular police enforcement has come to rely heavily on the
information technology as a more effective way of dealing with urban traffic. The
irony is that with increasing measures to control online activities, the Internet
access also correspondingly increases with the emerging technology, evolving on
a global level, as a daily feature of Iranian life. With less than half of Iranians hav-
ing access to the Internet, Iran is becoming a digitally saturated country.7
For the most part, the Islamic Republic maintains a love-hate relationship
with the Internet, a puzzling relationship that will continue beyond Rouhani’s
presidency. What most observers fail to address, however, is how censorship,
as a set of policies and mechanism of control, can be contextualized within liv-
ing practices of individuals, groups, and communities who create networks of
associations, affects and bonds across time and space. Internet is a network—
not just a tool!—and like any social networking phenomenon it can be self-
organizing in complex ways. While it is imperative to study censorship proc-
esses within the so-called state and society relations, it is more important to
understand the dynamics of social change in the way technology can be used
for various purposes in daily life.
Under Rouhani, the significance of Internet development has not been
dependent on policies that various state agencies continue to adopt to limit or
open up access to content online, but on the ways in which digital communica-
tions continue to shape relations as social capital in a country that is porous and
constantly adapting to new technologies. What the 2009 election showed was
how, despite censorship and even at times digital shutdowns, social networks
built around Internet and mobile technologies continued to organize collective
action, although their effectiveness, like any other form of political mobilization,
is hardly clear. It is in ways people interact with the new technology and build
capital through (weak) social ties that the power of the Internet should be
understood, not how effectively they could overcome authoritarian regimes.
More than five years after the 2009 postelection uprisings, Iran faces a slow
yet deep-seated transformation or what the late British social theorist, Raymond
Williams, called “the long revolution” (Williams, 1961). The fact that Rouhani
340 Asian Politics & Policy—Volume 7, Issue 2—2015

and other leading politicians openly speak about Facebook and express their
opinions on social media sites, followed by a large audience, is indicative of a
major shift in the Iranian public life, a shift that perhaps all factions within the
Islamic Republic recognize and seek to reconcile with. For sure, during Rouha-
ni’s presidency certain boundaries have been transgressed, the greatest of
which is the very knowledge that the Internet and its public life can no longer
be contained in favor of the few in power.

Notes
1
Before and after his election victory, Rouhani had numerous talks about the speed and filtering of
the Internet. In this particular speech, he explicitly criticized some of the key state policies on the
Internet. For an earlier example of Rouhani’s call for greater Internet freedom in Iran, see his inter-
view with Christiane Amanpour on September 25, 2013, available at http://amanpour.blogs.cnn.
com/2013/09/25/transcript-amanpour-rouhani-interview/.
2
Institutional data about the rates of Internet penetration remain problematic, with different sour-
ces giving various penetration rates. It is likely that the rate of penetration is somewhere between 30%
and 35%, considerably higher than Iran‘s neighboring countries, though most likely less than Turkey
(45%). For a critical study of Internet statistics in Iran, see Bahram Pourghadiri‘s blog post,“ The
bewildering maze of Internet usage statistics in Iran.”Netbina. Retrieved from http://www.netbina.
com/blog/2014/8/8/internet-usage-in-iran, last accessed November 23, 2014.
3
For a report on the speech by the Supreme Leader on soft war in September 2009, see Roozonline
(2009), “‘Instances’ of Soft War.” retrieved from http://www.roozonline.com/english/news3/news-
item/archive/2009/november/27/article/instances-of-soft-war.html.
4
For a comprehensive study of Internet censorship in Iran, see Internet infrastructure and Policy
Report, Small Media, January 2014. http://smallmedia.org.uk/sites/default/files/u8/InternetInfras-
tructure_Jan14.pdf, last accessed November 6, 2014.
5
Field observation, Tehran, Iran, June 6–11, 2013.
6
https://www.facebook.com/search/more/?q5Mahmoud1Vaezi&init5public.
7
See note 2.

References
Akhavan, Niki. (2012). Electronic Iran: The cultural politics of an online evolution. New Brunswick,
NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Al-Jazeera. (2012, September 24). Iran to launch giant domestic Intranet. Retrieved from http://
www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/09/201292471215311826.html.
Amanpour, Christiane. (2013). Entire interview: Amanpour/Rouhani. Retrieved from: http://
amanpour.blogs.cnn.com/2013/09/25/transcript-amanpour-rouhani-interview/.
Ball, James, & Dehghan, Saeed Kamali. (2013). Iran accused of using online censorship and hack-
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may/31/iran-online-censorship-influence-election.
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javan-e ma az daast naraft: block farsi shabakehaye ejtemaie taghviyaat shaavad [Satellite and
Internet came but our youth’s identity did not wane away: Strengthen Farsi social media sites].
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Web Sources
Ayatollah Khamenei, Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/www.Khamenei.ir
Communications Ministry: https://www.ict.gov.ir/
Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB): http://www.irib.ir/
Mohammad Javad Zarif, Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jzarif
Rouhani’s Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/rouhani.ir
Small Media: http://smallmedia.org.uk/term/1/7.
The Commission to Determine the Instances of Criminal Content (CDICC):
http://internet.ir/
The Iran Cyber Police (FATA): www.cyberpolice.ir/page/2431
WhatsApp: http://www.whatsapp.com

Babak Rahimi
Associate Professor of Communication, Culture and Religious Studies at the
Department of Literature, University of California, San Diego, USA

Print Media and Governance in Bangladesh: A Critical Reading

Poverty-stricken, densely populated, and faced with many socioeconomic chal-

lenges, Bangladesh is often cited as one of the most misgoverned and corrupt
countries in the world. It is worth noting that from 2001, Bangladesh had the
distinction of being the top most corrupt country in the world for five consecu-
tive years (Khan, 2013).
The reintroduction of print media in the 1990s, after two decades of authori-
tarian rule, has had a revolutionary impact on the country. Print media has
become one of the cornerstones of the governance process, playing the role of
watchdog. There is one result: “ad hoc and piecemeal responses of the govern-
ment come about from time to time, following persistent media outcry. . .relat-
ing to specific issues and events” (Osmany, 2009, p. 1).
The World Bank (1992) defines governance as the “manner in which power is
exercised in the management of a country’s economic and social resources for
development” (p.1). The impact of media on governance is primarily seen in
three ways, that is, “through creating a platform for political debate, by raising
awareness about politics and the policy process and by exposing corruption”
(CGS, 2006, p. 106).
This study critically reviews the role of print media in governance in Bangla-
desh. The study uses The Daily Star, the leading English-language national daily