Religious Journalism Evolution in Contemporary Iran

Religious journalism is a popular genre that has received less exposure among the studies of the Iranian press. For nearly two centuries of print journalism in the country, no national newspaper has regularly reported on religious matters. This paper provides a comparative review of the content of the two dailies; Kayhan and Ettela’at, during of the first thirteen days of the month of Muharram from 1956-2006. The results showed a significant relationship with 99% confidence between the two papers regarding style, subject, function, size, and place of content and photos. The use of the news genre increased in the three decades after the revolution of 1979 and decreased in the face of religious advertisements. In the pre-revolutionary period, the function of religious education and preaching was prominent, and in the years after the revolution, the informative and guidance function with a focus on the biographies of religious leaders became more prevalent. The educational function is more evident in the Kayhan Daily, and the religious publicity function was more prominent in the other one. Indeed, the two newspapers have the opposite trend in terms of the number and size of articles before and after the revolution period.