Introduction

It could be said that media is both simple and complex. It is simple in the sense that almost everyone considers themselves familiar with it and recognizes and uses at least some of its manifestations. It is complex because defining it precisely presents challenges, including overlaps with art, culture, virtual space, and more, making it extremely difficult to delineate boundaries between them. Hujjat al-Islam wal-Muslemin Hossein Adabi Charami, a professor of advanced levels at the Mashhad Seminary and a researcher of media jurisprudence, explores the nature and dimensions of media jurisprudence in this exclusive article.

Throughout their lives, all humans interact with their surrounding world, utilizing various tools, including media tools, for communication. Media tools range from simple ones, such as language and face-to-face verbal communication, to electronic and digital media tools and their products, such as films, series, animations, social networks, applications, websites, and more.

Thus, the scope of media tools and everything defined as media is vast. Jurisprudence, as the science of determining religious obligations, is tasked with clarifying human interactions, including the use, production, and application of media tools, just as it does for many other human activities.

Media is not limited to its tools alone; it can be analyzed jurisprudentially from the perspectives of the message transmitter, the message receiver, the message content, and the management of media tools. Therefore, to identify the audience of media jurisprudence and the obligated party who must receive their duties from this branch of knowledge, attention must be paid to the various dimensions of media. Sometimes the audience is an individual merely consuming media; sometimes they use a media entity as a tool for their work; and sometimes, as a governmental authority, they seek to engineer and manage media within the framework of governance. Additionally, an individual may interact with media as a producer of media tools or products, or as a content creator in various formats. The religious duties of each of these roles and their interactions in individual, social, and governmental contexts constitute the subject matter of media jurisprudence.

Another important aspect of the jurisprudential analysis of media is its impacts. Media can have individual, social, or governmental effects. Similarly, the producer can be an individual, a community, or a government. Media may directly affect its audience or have an indirect effect through an interconnected chain of influences.

Another issue is the actuality of media’s impact. Sometimes a media product directly influences its audience, prompting an intellectual or behavioral response. However, sometimes the effect is not immediate and remains latent, manifesting only when conditions are met, and obstacles are removed. This is among the issues that media jurisprudence must address, and it should not focus solely on immediate effects. Some media products have a transient effect, disappearing after their impact, while others are enduring, remaining relevant for years or even centuries, engaging multiple generations. In all these matters, media jurisprudence must determine the duties of the obligated party in their interaction with media tools and products.

Thus, media jurisprudence can be defined as follows: “The jurisprudence that determines the obligations of individuals, society, and governance regarding the production, packaging, dissemination, management, and use of media content and tools.”

What is significant after defining media jurisprudence is the rationale for engaging with this branch of knowledge. Media is present in all aspects of individual, family, and social life—sometimes for accessing news, sometimes for entertainment, leisure, or education through films, series, and audio-visual productions, sometimes for interaction and dialogue, sometimes for earning income, and sometimes for worship. Therefore, for a religiously obligated individual, understanding how to utilize this capacity is crucial, and media jurisprudence is responsible for clarifying this.

Since media is also a tool for developing power, and power manifests in various domains such as military, scientific, technological, political, economic, and cultural, media serves as a platform for utilization and communication development in all these areas. If the development of power aims to strengthen the foundations or expand the scope of a civilization, media jurisprudence, in addition to determining the obligations of individuals, society, and governance, is also responsible for outlining media-based civilizational systems. In other words, the overarching policies and strategies for developing a civilization in political, cultural, economic, ideological, military, and other domains are designed within media jurisprudence. In this context, media jurisprudence is no longer merely about determining the direct obligations of individuals but about outlining indirect and foundational obligations to enable proactive management, guidance, and development of a civilized society. It is evident that such a mission for a branch of jurisprudence differs from what occurs in individual jurisprudence and involves complexities that require moving beyond simplistic determinations of individual or societal obligations. The obligated party must be viewed as a civilization with a historical legacy and a far-reaching future. In this context, media jurisprudence is intertwined with future studies as one of its preliminary requirements and is linked to various fields of civilizational development, i.e., sciences related to civilization-building. The jurist specializing in media jurisprudence must equip themselves with these fields and engage with them as an informed expert; otherwise, identifying issues—the first step in addressing them and determining the obligations of the obligated party—will not be done correctly. This should not be confused with subject analysis in various civilization-related sciences, as what is relevant in media jurisprudence is the use of these sciences as tools for civilizational development. Therefore, the independent interaction of each of these sciences with media is not the focus, nor is it about analyzing their subject matter to determine the obligations of the obligated party in relation to them. Furthermore, engaging with these sciences does not equate to subject analysis for civilizational development and is not in conflict with the duties of the jurist specializing in media jurisprudence. However, it seems that understanding certain subjects is an inherent part of the responsibilities of jurists specializing in any branch of jurisprudence.