The Eeffect of Television on Shaping People's Participation in Irans Presidential Eelection Considering the Eemergence of new Mobile Media

Before emerging the new media, television was the dominant medium in shaping the results of the elections. Nowadays, with the emergence of new social media, television is struggling with a serious rival which also played a significant role in the last parliament election in Iran.
This paper, using Delphi technique, summarizes media experts’ analyses and prediction of the future of television in Iranian political life. The main question is: what are the consequences of emerging social media and their political functions for television? Can television survive after the dominance of this phenomenon? Some believe that the power of television is based on its role in political life of the society, especially elections. So if this aspect is going to be diminished, television will lose its importance. On the other hand, some experts believe that the other functions that television continues to produce contents around, such as entertainment and education, will save it. Furthermore, it could redefine its role in political advertising and change to a reference for news reliability.
In the new situation, television has not the prior position in elections. While there is a possibility to return to previous position by redefining its goals and mission, at this point television has a meaningful distance to this situation. Our interviewed experts believe that social media can play not only the distributor role, but also the producer. It means that after a while we face with some reference persons or groups in social media who are reliable enough for their audience and will cover today’s lack of reliability. Therefore, if we presuppose that today reliability is a core-competency for television, it will not last in near future.