Motivations Of Iranian Political Satirists: A Case Study
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Date
2014
Authors
Farjami, Seyed Mahmood
Journal Title
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Volume Title
Publisher
Universiti Sains Malaysia
Abstract
This study investigated the motivations of Iranian political satirists, either writers or cartoonists, for producing satire for print and online media via two research question: i) What is the motivation in production of political satire in Iran? and, ii) What is the strongest motivational factor in political satire production in Iran? For this aim, nine Iranian political satirists, with at least 10 years’ experience working in Iranian media, were interviewed using semi-structured and open-ended questions. Alongside this, a comprehensive background of the development of political satire in Iran serves as a secondary source of data. The three major theories of humor, Superiority, Relief and Incongruity theories were combined to establish a comprehensive theoretical framework that covers the social, psychological and cognitive aspects of humor. Directed Qualitative Content Analysis (QCA) approach, which uses a mixture of concept-driven and data-driven categories to create the coding frame, is used to in order to take advantage of preexisting theories while not being limited to them, and going beyond to discover new findings.
The data derived from each satirist’s interview was analyzed first individually and then all together. The overall conclusion of this research was that “relief from anger and aggression” is the strongest motivation behind the production of political satire in Iran. This relief usually is caused by observing the incongruence between the ideal and the actual; and drives the satirist to social action in the form of punishing the cause of the corruption and oppression through ridicule or humiliation. The study also shows that even a framework made up of the three dominant theories of humor cannot cover all the motivations of professional political satire and there is a significant amount of motivational aspects which cannot described by these theories. This study shows that a combination of the three best-known theories of humor is necessary to explain motivations to produce political satire but it is not sufficient. Accordingly, personal satisfaction, in the form of intellectual, professional, and financial interests, also notably motivates the production of satire.
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Keywords
Motivations of Iranian , political satirists