Nostalgia Without Memory: Iranian-Americans, Cultural Programming, and Internet Television

This thesis explores the role of Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) in repairing the fractured post-revolution Iranian culture. Most internet television programming is currently produced by second generation Iranian-Americans who feel responsible for reviving the old Iranian culture that was fractured after the Islamization of Iranian culture in post-revolutionary Iran. These second generation Iranian-Americans employ the affordances of IPTV in their cultural production to connect to the larger community of Iranians around the world and to Iranians in Iran. They use Internet television to invite Iranians to look from the outside into the Iranian culture and try to improve the cultural misfortunes that Islamization may have produced. In this process, as the technologies of communication quickly changes, the linkage between the Iranians in diaspora and Iranians in Iran proves to be an important signifier in the process of globalization.

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