The rapid expansion of digital platforms has transformed the economic, social, cultural, and regulatory landscape of contemporary societies. Due to network effects, economies of scale and scope, data accumulation, algorithmic control, and their capacity to structure interactions among users, businesses, advertisers, developers, and public institutions, digital platforms have increasingly become powerful actors in markets and public life. This transformation has created new regulatory challenges, particularly in countries where institutional arrangements, legal mandates, and policy instruments remain fragmented. This research project, entitled Designing a Regulatory Framework for Platforms in Iran: With a Focus on Developing Policy Instruments for Regulatory Organizations, addresses this emerging governance challenge by examining how platform regulation in Iran can move from scattered, reactive, and predominantly hard regulatory interventions toward a coherent, instrument-based, and context-sensitive governance framework.
The main objective of the study is to explain the problem of platform regulation in Iran, identify the existing institutional and regulatory landscape, analyze key gaps and overlaps, and design a practical policy toolbox for regulatory organizations. The research seeks to assist regulators in moving from the diagnosis of regulatory problems and risks to the selection of appropriate intervention logics, policy instruments, and operational policy packages. Accordingly, the study is both analytical and applied in nature. Methodologically, it adopts a qualitative approach based on systematic literature review, policy document analysis, comparative analysis, and semi-structured expert interviews. In the first phase, domestic policy documents and regulatory arrangements, including documents of the Supreme Council of Cyberspace, the National Information Network, SATRA regulations, policy proposals related to basic digital services, and official reports on Iran’s digital economy, were reviewed. International experiences, particularly those of the European Union, the United Kingdom, India, Australia, and the United States, were also examined to identify comparative lessons and policy gaps. In the second phase, semi-structured interviews were conducted with experts in platform regulation, media governance, communication law, digital governance, and public policy. Participants were selected purposively and through snowball sampling to include diverse perspectives from governmental bodies, academia, regulatory organizations, research institutions, and platform-related actors.
The findings show that Iran’s platform regulatory system contains important elements such as data sovereignty, licensing, institutional transparency, support for domestic basic services, and content regulation. However, these elements are distributed across multiple documents and organizations in a fragmented, uncoordinated, and sometimes contradictory manner. The analysis indicates that platform regulation in Iran has largely relied on hard instruments, including licensing, data localization requirements, access restrictions, and content control, while softer and co-regulatory mechanisms—such as codes of conduct, transparency reporting, supervised self-regulation, civil society participation, user trust-building, algorithmic accountability, and independent oversight—remain underdeveloped. The study also identifies public trust as a missing link in Iran’s platform governance framework. Although policy documents emphasize localization, national digital sovereignty, and support for domestic platforms, they have paid insufficient attention to user experience, privacy protection, service quality, fair competition, and platform accountability.