ABSTRACT
Advocating human rights is a perilous activity. Human rights activists who live in authoritarian states pay the heaviest price for their writings and for their political and legalistic activities. This chapter addresses media and the discourse of human rights as they relate to the Islamic Republic of Iran. It explores communication technologies and media with respect to issues of press freedom, media access, political communication, performing citizenship and political structures in the Islamic Republic of Iran. The chapter reviews some of the theoretical difficulties that haunt the human rights discourses. The main initial difficulty with international human rights law is that it does not account for the theoretical foundation upon which it is based. The chapter discusses the theoretical difficulties of human rights discourse in the case of Iran. It presents the state of media and communication space in Iran to reflect on those issues that animate the human rights discourse.
