How much do we know about technology and scientific capabilities of the country? How much do the middle managers of the country know about inventions and achievements and progresses of domestic scientists? How much does the private sector know about what happenings are about to happen in the scientific ambient of the country? How much do students and teachers know about what their colleagues and classmates are doing and what projects they have? How much do representatives of the Islamic Consultative Assembly and decision-maker managers know about small and big scientific and technology projects? And eventually, how much does the Iranian society know about its scientists and how much does it know about technology and scientific situation? The truth is we are weak in scientific notification and scientific journalism and majority of the country don’t know about each other’s works and projects and except receiving patchwork news and get informed about advertising projects, they are unaware of generality of the story and depth of these achievements. Our scientific propagation and notification has turned to advertisement and is not scientific news anymore. We are not aware of happenings around us as much as we know about other countries and world scientific achievements. One reason is these very attractive media programs that westerners make and adorn their progresses. Most of Iranian televisual programs and magazines and most of the scientific news in Persian are related to the west and unconsciously make audiences admire. The truth is science and technologies aren’t specified to geography and have a global nature. But since scientific power leads to political power, it is natural that each country shows itself powerful and trumpets its discoveries and scientific communication. Even Arabic countries whose scientific background is weaker than others spend money today and accept migrant scientists and by giving money become scientific partner of investigation even though just in title and build research-scientific states. It means that science has turned to the political power tool and everyone tries to show himself more powerful and more capable. However, westerners are pioneers in this issue and show themselves premier and especially their domination over informative sky and media atmosphere and having hundreds of channels and magazines cause people to believe that western scientists have made amazing progresses and their distance with world is astronomical. If you talk with anybody you will see that they have accepted science and technology progress in the west as an obvious thing. Notification and advertisement and propagation shouldn’t be underestimated. These advertisements not only affect political power but also affect economical power. This has been assumed as an axiomatic issue that Chinese and Korean products have dominated the world. If that Korean product has become applicable in most Iranian homes, more than its capabilities it is because of the media power and advertisement. We are weak exactly in this field and are not able to present our works and achievements. Our scientists have made some considerable progresses in different fields today. These progresses are both scientific and technological. But most of people and even most of officials don’t know about them. Even the propaganda aspect of our media form of presentation ruling over other aspects. Namely, for the anniversary of victory of the Islamic Revolution or the government week or such occasions, we distribute advertising films to show a part of scientific and technology or cultural and economical capabilities of the country. But the effects of these films don’t lead to economical blossom and don’t change people’s beliefs as much as it should. Right now, there are Iranian products competitive with foreign ones but most people don’t know about them or they are degraded to ornaments when advertising. Our media’s orientation is not a powerful orientation that can affect audiences’ mind. Actually, we are losing in both national and political self-confidence and economical market. Iranian advanced products don’t have customers as much as Chinese, Korean and western brands in Iran. When you can’t your product in your own country you will face problem in other countries, too. This problem is because of media. In infusing the message and persuasion we are behind our rivals and can’t compete with them. Many times governmental companies go to other countries for buying what they need or receiving services and asking foreign supplier, whereas they can make their needs meet domestically in a very desirable way. The reason is that media acts weakly and advertisement can’t handle the message. If we look at the status of our media realistically, we will see that there are many problems and shortages here. One of the problems is the bold presence of the governmental sector. The government tighten the space of the private sector unconsciously while sometimes compete with it willingly. There is the discussion of producing documentaries. Which share is allocated to producing scientific and technology films among the different sections of producing documentaries of private and governmental sector? We act weakly in this field, too. Our marketing and advertisement are old and has official and childish form. Which share has been allocated to this important issue in televisual channels and other Medias? We can’t compete with advertisements which are better in every situation with this condition.

We should strengthen our media. We should value scientific journalism more. We should have the private sector know facts of the market and get out of this ornament situation as soon as possible. Although the presidency vice presidency for science and technology affairs has started some activities in this field as much as it can afford, it is still in the beginning of the path. If we don’t think about the supply of science and goods and service and technology, we will lose everything to western and eastern rivals especially now that in the post-JCPOA time, the presence of rival is more serious and bolder.

Parviz Karami, President of knowledge-based science, technology and economy culture development headquarter