MEDIA AND POLITICAL MOBILIZATION: The role of IRIB Programs in Mobilizing People to Participate in Annual Rallies (Case study:22 of Bahman and Qod's Day)

Nowadays the study of the Role of IRIB in different political and social arenas of Iran is increasingly considered important by the researchers. The annual rallies of "22nd of Bahman" and "Qod's Day" are of important mass events, which the role of media in producing and transmitting their messages for mobilizing people is less considered in scientific researches. It seems that the lack of scientific and serious studies in this issue has caused the continuity of traditional procedures in media especially in television. The scientific study of this issue could be led to a better recognition as well as presenting strategies to improve the function of media in these events. Therefore, the main question of this study is “which are the patterns, content, techniques and methods that the IRIB (Television in this study) uses for mobilizing people in annual rallies?” The hypothesis is that "TV uses the same type of programs for message transmission in both rallies and neglects the audience features in producing and transmitting messages". The research is done by documentary method (for data of theoretical section) and content analysis (for studying the content of TV programs). The data are also analyzed by the SPSS software. The main findings of this study include "TV program makers pay more attention to ‘22nd of Bahman’ rally than the ‘Qod's Day’ rally”, “the Non-explanatory formats in program- making and transmitting message are more dominating in both rallies”, “direct and motivating methods of transmitting message are more common than indirect and persuasive methods”, “TV program -makers dont pay enough attention to interests, features and tastes of the audiences in producing and transmitting message”, and “TV program -makers make unbalanced use of the political issues and conditions of the society”.