Zanan TV was launched at Zuccotti Park

We believe that it is right to launch Zanan TV in the alternative space created by Occupy Wall Street, because Zanan TV is creating an alternative space online.

Zanan TV is the successor of important websites created by the Iranian women's movement, including Zanan-e Iran, Feminist Tribute, Change for Equality, Women's Field, The Feminist School and, most recently, Fair Family Law.

These websites were alternative platforms for developing different social actions, campaigns, as well as feminist discourses. They significantly influenced the democracy movement in Iran.

As their successor, Zanan TV aims to be in the vanguard of the women's movement in Iran. As a medium for visual communication, Zanan TV's primary goal is to create and develop an alternative space for strengthening feminist discourse and finding common ground between advocates for women's rights and other pro-democracy activists. At the same time, Zanan TV is working to strengthen relations between Iran's democracy movement and transnational movements, including Arab movements for democratization (the so-called "Arab Spring") and Occupy Wall Street as a growing international movement against capitalism.

Zanan TV is launched after year-long work on technical engineering and the development of a theoretical framework for alternative feminist media as well as new techniques for participatory citizen journalism.

There are many similarities between the Iranian pro-democracy movement and the Occupy Wall Street movement. Occupy Wall Street activists occupy a public area, such as a square or a public park, and change the character of this public space into a location where the organization of the movement takes place. Team building is essential for organising specialized functions in tents, such as media and communications, medical treatment and library resources. Teamwork becomes a key dynamic in movement building.

Pro-democracy activists, especially those in the women's movement, also act similarly within cyber space. These activists occupy space in social networks and websites where they change the character of these networks or websites for the purpose of movement building. The occupation of cyber space to enable activist voices to be heard is thus a strategic process for movement building. Without this space, the activists would not be able to come together to speak out, express their views, and share their visions of the future.

Occupy Wall Street serves as a metaphor for Zanan TV, demonstrating that Zanan TV has occupied the cyber environment to create an alternative space. Zanan TV is a virtual tent, an alternative empowering space for marginalized women who do not have a voice on mainstream media in Iran.  It is aspace for building networks and dialogues between movements and activists, as well as a space for promoting gender-equitable democracy in the Iranian democratic movement.

Zanan TV has on-air and on-demand programmes.

On-air programmes include weekly news analyses and documentary films (produced by Zanan TV), as well as live coverage of relevant events, such as conferences, meetings and protests.

On-demand programmes consist of an archive of videos related to women's issues. Although some of these videos are accessible on youtube or other websites, these are now newly compiled, categorized and made easily accessible on Zanan TV for users interested in women's studies, human rights and democracy from a citizen's perspective. Feminist analysis of the video on this archive is also useful for strengthening the feminist perspective of younger women's rights activists.

Most of the videos produced will include footage of citizen journalists as active participants in the work of Zanan TV, including activists in the women's movement and other social movements. Zanan TV recognizes that without the help of Iranian citizens inside or outside the country, we would not be able to continue our work in Zanan TV as alternative citizen TV – an innovative space for the women's movement and the democracy movement in Iran.

Zanan TV is currently hosted by the Institute for Women's Empowerment (IWE) and supported by HIVOS. We welcome your comments and criticisms.

Comments: