According to a study conducted in Tehran, Khabar Fori [Breaking News] and Akharain Khabar [Latest News] are the most popular news sources on the five most frequently used messaging services in Iran.
According to the study, Khabar Fori has a total of over 6.9 million followers on the five platforms, of which over 3.3 million are on Telegram. This comes while the total number of Iran’s official news agency IRNA on all the five platforms is slightly more than 609 thousands, of which over one third, or more than 224 thousands are on Telegram.
The second most popular news source Akharin Khabar has over 3.7 million followers on the five platforms of which nearly 1.8 million are on Telegram.
The most popular official news agency according to data released by Eslahat News is IRGC-linked Fars News Agency which has a total of 3.3 million followers on the five platforms, including million 1.8 million on Telegarm. Another IRGC-linked news agency Tasnim has over 2.9 million followers on the five platforms of which more than 2 are million on telegram.
The IRGC’s own news channels on Telegram including the IRGC News and the IRGC Cyber Army channels are nowhere among the to ten popular messaging platforms.
Homegrown messaging services are not popular in Iran despite being promoted by the government as users believe and fear that the government has access to users’ private data on those platforms. The study sowed that ISNA, Entekhab and a few other outlets including Eslahat News have chosen not to be present on some of the homegrown platforms. On the other hand, some of the government news organizations like IRNA and ISNA and the two IRGC-linked news agencies are active on Telegram although they encouraged everyone to leave the platform following their official ban.
Telegram with more than 40 million Iranian accounts and Instagram with over 22 million accounts from Iran are often named by Iranian authorities as the most frequently used messaging services in Iran.
Tehran banned Telegram after the 2017 presidential election and Instagram following the 2022 Women, Life, Freedom movement.
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