Breaking the Middle East Media Paradigm: HispanTV Streaming Politics in Spanish from Iran

Abstract:This article examines the Iranian television channel HispanTV Nexo Latino, produced in Spanish for Spain and Latin American countries. Traditionally the Middle East has been understood as the source and/or recipient of media content from the West. However, the contemporary media scenario has changed radically after the rise of global television channels. Al-Jazeera news is one example that reverses the role of the Middle East by placing the region as producer of discourses in relation to hegemonic voices broadcast from the Middle East by Western channels like CNN and BBC. Scholars have studied this context without paying enough attention to the media relations based on a South–South perspective. During these years, HispanTV has participated in a difficult political scenario, claiming to have accurate and unbiased information for more than 300 million spectators spread across more than twenty countries who are mostly used to information controlled by dominant economic groups or families. Thus, this paper explores the discourse promoted by HispanTV in order to understand how an Iranian channel plays an active role in terms of the media economy by strengthening political links beyond the region and suggesting a new trans-national way to “be together” around dissent. At the end, it will be possible to understand how an Iranian television channel disrupts the political discourse in Spanish-speaking countries through a grid of programs consolidating a global and digital community.