The State and Society in the Iranian Public Sphere after the Islamic Revolution

thesis is an attempt to understand the concept of the public sphere through applying it
to the Islamic Republic of Iran. This requires understanding the era of the revolution of
information and communication technology, as it has affected the structures of the Iranian
public sphere. It also aims to understand the Iranian public sphere after the Islamic
Revolution of 1979. It tries to offer a complete picture of the Iranian public sphere,
including its state and society. Here, both the concept of the public sphere and the Iranian
public sphere are being used in order to understand each other.

The concept of the public sphere, here, is understood as it covers all actions and reactions that occur in a country. Its contemporary model is one which greatly depends on the Internet and uses non-controllable freedoms. The aim is, therefore, to find out the nature of the Iranian public sphere after the Islamic Revolution and describe the role that the agents of both state and society play in the Iranian public sphere.

To collect and analyse data, updated documents and methods are used. Thus, the thesis
has used different resources including pictorial and online documents. Thematic analysis is used to analyse the collected data. It has partly been gained through online media
observation to collect data, and content and discourse analysis to analyse it.

Finally, by showing reactivity inside the Iranian public sphere, this thesis suggests that nondemocratic regimes cannot disable the public sphere totally and also the public sphere can be active even under the hegemony of non-democratic powers. However, activity does not necessarily mean strength, as the Iranian public sphere can be considered as active but also weak. That is mainly because most of its activities are fruitless ones.