Abstract
This study aims to analyze the production trends, formal features, publishing patterns, and structural inequalities in books published on media literacy in Iran. This descriptive-analytical bibliometric study was conducted on 336 books registered in the Iranian National Book House database (SHAPAK) under the keyword "media literacy. " Data were extracted using a researcher-developed checklist comprising variables including publication year, authorship/translation type, publisher type (academic, governmental, private), place of publication, number of authors, and page count. Instrument reliability was confirmed through the test-retest method (94% agreement). Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics (frequency, percentage, compound annual growth rate), dispersion coefficient, and Gini concentration coefficient. Findings: The publication trend increased from 1 title in 2008 to 93 titles in 2025, with a compound annual growth rate of 31%. The main surge occurred in the last five years, accounting for 63% of total production. Of the total, 92% of books were authored and 8% were translations. Private publishers accounted for 88. 4%, governmental publishers 7. 4%, and academic publishers only 4. 2%. Geographically, 62. 4% of books were published in Tehran (Gini coefficient = 0. 73). Single-authored books constituted 55. 3%, two-authored 29. 9%, and three or more authors 14. 8%. Regarding volume, 36. 7% of books had 101–150 pages, 26% under 100 pages, 23% 151–250 pages, and 11% over 251 pages.

Introduction
In the age of information saturation and the pervasive expansion of social media, media literacy has ceased to be a merely academic topic and has become a vital necessity for citizens in contemporary societies. The concept, which first emerged in the 1960s through the work of Marshall McLuhan and was subsequently developed by theorists such as Hall and David Buckingham, is now understood as a set of cognitive, critical, and productive skills that enable citizens not merely to consume media passively but to engage with messages as informed, critical, and reflective actors (Kellner & Share, 2019). In Iran, media literacy entered public and educational discourse gradually from the late 2000s, and the approval of the course "Thinking and Media Literacy" in the second cycle of secondary education in 2016 marked an emotional turning point. Since then, numerous training courses, specialized workshops, and written productions have emerged in this field, and despite modest growth, research on the analysis of this system of productions remains scarce.
Books are among the most influential and enduring media of knowledge transmission, playing a role in the production, storage, and dissemination of knowledge. Bibliometric analysis of works published in a scientific field can identify trends, patterns, and intellectual priorities, and reveal structural gaps, weaknesses, and strengths (Borgman & Furner, 2002). Bibliometrics, as one of the subfields of scientometrics, makes possible the quantitative analysis of written productions and provides policymakers, educational planners, and publishers with the means for informed decision-making (Lyu et al., 2026). The importance of the present study lies in the fact that, for the first time, it uses data from the official registration reference of books in the country—the Iran National Book House (SHAPA)—to provide a comprehensive analysis of the books published in this field. It not only fills an existing knowledge gap regarding the state of written media literacy productions in Iran but can also serve as a foundation for cultural policy-making and educational planning in this domain.
The theoretical framework of this research rests on two key concepts: the scientific communication ecosystem and structural inequality. The first concept, rooted in systemic approaches to science and technology (Borgman & Furner, 2002), views the production and distribution of knowledge not as a simple linear process in which authors merely produce content and publishers disseminate it, but as a complex and intertwined system of actors and structures that interact with and influence one another. The second concept derives from sociological and epistemological critiques of science (Zetterqvist & Bach, 2023; Fricker, 2007) and holds that the production of knowledge is never entirely independent of power relations and social and political contexts; the unequal distribution of resources and political, economic, and cultural influence shapes the relations of knowledge production. From this perspective, factors such as geographic concentration of scientific production, the dominance of certain institutions in the publishing process, patterns of co-authorship, unequal access to financial and technical resources, and even linguistic and cultural orientations can act as mechanisms that reproduce and reinforce structural inequalities in a knowledge field.

Research Methodology
This study is a descriptive-analytical bibliometric investigation. The statistical population comprised all 333 book titles registered in the Iran National Book House database (SHAPA) whose title or keywords contained the term "media literacy." Data were extracted through a researcher-developed checklist comprising the following variables: publication year (2008–2025), type of authorship/translation, publisher type (academic, governmental, private), place of publication, number of authors, and number of pages. Inclusion criteria were: books with "media literacy" or closely related terms in the title or keywords; publication between 2008 and 2025; registration in SHAPA; Persian language; at least 50 pages (to exclude short pamphlets); and having an ISBN. Exclusion criteria included books only marginally related to media literacy, reprints and new editions, multi-volume works counted as single records, books without an ISBN, and school textbooks published by the Ministry of Education.
Instrument reliability was established through test-retest: 10% of the data (34 titles) were randomly selected and re-extracted after two weeks; inter-rater agreement was calculated using Cohen's kappa at 0.94, indicating excellent reliability. Content validity was assessed by three experts in information science and knowledge studies, with content validity ratios above 0.79 for all items. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics (frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation, range), the compound annual growth rate (CAGR), the coefficient of variation, and the Gini concentration coefficient. The CAGR was calculated as CAGR = (EV/BV)^(1/n) − 1, where EV is the final value (93 books in 2025), BV is the initial value (1 book in 2008), and n is 17 years. Because the initial value was extremely low, the CAGR of 31% was interpreted cautiously and reported alongside year-by-year trends rather than as a precise annual growth rate. The Gini coefficient was computed for geographic distribution and publisher-type distribution to quantify structural inequalities, and the coefficient of variation was used to measure dispersion and variability. Calculations were performed in SPSS 28 and Excel.

Discussion
The Temporal Trend of Publication: Exponential Growth with Significant Fluctuations
The analysis of the publication trend of media literacy books from 2008 to 2025 reveals a pattern of exponential growth with considerable fluctuations over this seventeen-year period. The number of published titles increased from one in 2008 to 93 in 2025, with a compound annual growth rate of 31%—far higher than the average growth of Iran's publishing industry (approximately 7–10%) and indicative of explosive growth in this field, particularly in the 2020s. The main surge occurred in the last five years (2021–2025), which accounted for 63% of total production (212 of 336 titles). This surge can be attributed to three principal factors: first, the growing social need to distinguish accurate from inaccurate information in cyberspace and the expansion of social networks, which has increased public awareness of the importance of critical thinking in encountering media messages; second, the entry of media literacy into the official school curriculum through the approval of the course "Thinking and Media Literacy" in secondary education, which created institutional demand for written educational resources; and third, the significant increase in free training courses, workshops, and empowerment programs in this field organized by various cultural, media, and educational institutions, which stimulated demand for supplementary and skill-oriented books.
Against this growth, notable temporal gaps are observable in 2009, 2010, and 2011, when no books on media literacy were published. This interval reflects the gradual formation of the field in Iran and the insufficient maturity of media literacy discourse in those years. The coefficient of variation of 85% for the annual distribution of books indicates severe fluctuation and unequal distribution of productions over the seventeen-year period—productions were not distributed linearly and gradually but rather concentrated in specific years (especially the final years). This pattern of increasing growth, while confirming the transformation of media literacy into a subject and strategy, also indicates that the growth may stem more from external and situational factors than from the gradual institutionalization of this field in the country's scientific and educational structures.
Authorship versus Translation: The Dominance of Original Works with a Skill-Oriented Orientation
Of the 336 books, 309 (92%) were original works and 27 (8%) were translations. The first original book, entitled "Media Literacy and Communication Awareness" by Dr. Seyyed Reza Salehi Amiri, was published in 2008 by the Strategic Research Center of the Expediency Discernment Council, marking the beginning of the formation of written media literacy discourse in Iran. The first translation, with an eight-year interval, was "Media Literacy and Cognitive Awareness" by Elizabeth G. Bartels, translated by Mohammad Soltani-Far and Ali-Reza Bastani, published in 2016 by the Media Studies and Planning Office. The peak of translations occurred in 2021, with seven titles—the highest number of translations in a single year over the seventeen-year period. This can be attributed to increased awareness among publishers and translators of the importance of translated sources in filling theoretical and methodological gaps in the field.
This finding—92% authorship versus 8% translation—can be interpreted as a sign of relative maturity of the media literacy discourse in Iran and of the ability of domestic authors to produce local content (Chemsheh Sohrabi et al., 2017). However, given that most of these works are skill-oriented and practical and engage less with deep theoretical foundations (Vasefian et al., 2024), this authorship alone cannot be a sign of theoretical depth and scientific maturity; rather, it may indicate a preference for a translation-based approach over theoretical depth. On the other hand, the low translation rate may reflect insufficient knowledge of the global literature in this field.
Publisher Type: Private Sector Dominance and the Absence of Academia
The distribution of books by publisher type reveals the striking dominance of private publishers and the marginalization of academic and governmental publishers. Of the 336 books, 297 (88.4%) were published by private publishers, 25 (7.4%) by governmental publishers, and only 14 (4.2%) by academic publishers. Among the top publishers, Pashitan Publications with 44 titles (13.1% of total production) is the most prolific private publisher, followed by the Research Institute of Culture, Art, and Communication with 4 titles (1.2%) and the Jihad-e Daneshgahi Publications and the Media Studies and Planning Office with 3 titles (0.9%) each. The Gini coefficient calculated for the distribution of publisher types was 0.68, indicating severe inequality in the contribution of different publishers to the production of media literacy knowledge.
The 88.4% dominance of private publishers can be explained as indicating the dominance of a market-oriented approach over a scientific-research approach in the production of media literacy books; private publishers, with an economic logic, seem to be mainly seeking books with high sales and a broad general audience. The 4.2% share of academic publishers, in contrast, is a serious warning for the country's scientific and educational system, showing that Iran's academic system has not been able to define itself as the main producer and publisher of media literacy knowledge and has in practice delegated its role in producing the theoretical knowledge of this field to private publishers. This situation has important consequences for the future of the scientific development of media literacy in Iran, because the lack of active presence of academic publishers means weakness in theoretical knowledge production, non-institutionalization of this field in scientific and research structures, and excessive dependence of knowledge production on market logic and transient public demand—which in the long run can lead to the superficialization of media literacy knowledge and its distancing from deep theoretical foundations and fundamental research. In developed countries, the share of academic publishers in similar fields reaches 30 to 40 percent (Fru-Meigs et al., 2025), and this huge gap with the Iranian system can probably be explained as a deep structural deficiency in the country's scientific and research system.
Geographic Distribution: Extreme Concentration in the Capital
The geographic analysis of the place of publication reveals a pattern of extreme concentration in the capital and a deep gap with other parts of the country. Of the 336 books, 208 (62.4%) were published in Tehran, indicating severe and extreme concentration of publishing in the capital and showing that more than half of the total production in this field is concentrated in a single city. After Tehran, Torbat-e Heydarieh with 11 titles (3.2%)—that is, one hundredth of Tehran—is the second city, and the distance with Tehran is very large. After Tehran, no other city has a significant share in the production and publication of this field; so that all the cities of the country (excluding Tehran) with 128 titles have reached less than Tehran's share (208 titles). The Gini coefficient calculated for geographic distribution was 0.73, which is one of the highest levels of inequality reported in bibliometric studies of Iran.
This inequality is a deep and stable structural inequality in the publication of media literacy books in Iran, which indicates the concentration of publishing in the capital and the low diversity of publishing hubs. Over the seventeen-year period, media literacy books have been published in only 31 provinces and 37 cities, which, given the existence of 31 provinces and hundreds of cities in the country, indicates the dominance of a few cities over the publishing of this field and the relatively low diversity of publishing hubs. This concentration in Tehran is not merely a reflection of the overall structure of Iran's publishing industry but is rooted in the structural inequalities of the country's publishing industry, including access to printing, binding, page layout, distribution, and marketing infrastructure; access to a larger and more diverse audience, proximity to decision-making and policy-making institutions and cultural trustees, and access to translation and author networks that have made Tehran the undisputed pole of Iran's publishing. The geographic inequality of knowledge production and distribution in the field of media literacy has important consequences: it limits production and publication opportunities in other cities of the country, and gradually leads to the definition of the media literacy discourse in Iran mostly from the perspective of Tehran, and the diverse experiences and approaches present in other parts of the country are marginalized and less visible in the production of knowledge in this field. This can ultimately lead to the reproduction of inequality and, in the long run, to knowledge poverty in areas deprived of publishing.
Authorship Patterns: The Dominance of Single Authorship and the Absence of Group Collaboration
More than half of the productions in this field (54.05%) are the work of a single author, which indicates that the production of knowledge in this field is often an individual action based on personal experience (teaching, or media activity) rather than a group research project based on field research, interdisciplinary collaboration, and systematic methodology. As the number of authors increases, the share of books decreases significantly, so that the share of books with five or more authors is less than 4 percent. The low share of co-authored works in the field of media literacy in Iran is an indication of the dominance of individual authorship based on personal experience and teaching, rather than a group research project with systematic cooperation. Compared with other scientific fields in Iran, the share of group activities and co-authorship (5 or more authors) is 3.9 percent, which indicates that media literacy, compared with other scientific fields, is less inclined toward group collaboration. Whereas media literacy is recognized as an interdisciplinary field and in the global literature, research in this field is often conducted with the collaboration of researchers from various disciplines, including communication, educational sciences, psychology, sociology, law, and computer science (Jeong et al., 2012). In contrast, 55% of Iranian books are single-authored, and only 14% (43 titles) were written by three or more authors. This obvious paradox shows that book production in the field of media literacy in Iran is often an individual action (based on the author's personal experience, teaching, or media activity) rather than a group research project based on field research, interdisciplinary collaboration, and systematic methodology.
The probable reasons for this pattern include: the skill-training nature of many of these books, which do not require heavy interdisciplinary research and can be compiled by one person with sufficient experience; the high cost and time of coordination in group authorship, which leads publishers and authors toward the faster model with one author; the absence of an institutional requirement for multi-person collaboration in book authorship (unlike scientific articles, which sometimes require multi-person collaboration); and the possibility of substituting non-author roles such as "scientific advisor," "editor," and "scientific reviewer" that are not recorded in bibliographic data. This individualistic pattern not only is inconsistent with the interdisciplinary nature of media literacy but also limits the opportunities for producing multifaceted and more comprehensive knowledge and can lead to the production of works with limited and one-sided approaches that do not sufficiently exploit the specialized capacities of different disciplines.
Page Volume: The Dominance of Standard Educational Books
Regarding volume, 36.7% of the books were in the range of 101–150 pages (standard educational books), approximately 26% had fewer than 100 pages (short educational pamphlets), 23% had 151–250 pages (semi-specialized books), and 11% exceeded 251 pages (reference and comprehensive books). The dominance of 101–150-page volumes indicates the predominance of standard educational books with a skill-practical orientation over theoretical-research ones. This distribution can probably be explained as indicating that the production of deep theoretical and reference works, which require long time for authorship, research, and editing, has been marginalized; however, confirmation of this claim also requires content analysis of the books in future research. The average number of pages was 147, indicating a relatively high dispersion in book volume—ranging from very short pamphlets to comprehensive and detailed books. This distribution shows that authors and publishers in this field mainly tend toward producing works of medium and skill-oriented volume that can respond quickly to the educational needs of the audience, but this tendency means neglecting the need for producing deep theoretical and reference works, which can contribute to the deepening of the scientific discourse of media literacy in Iran. This issue reveals the necessity of balancing skill and theoretical productions.
Comparative Analysis and Theoretical Explanation
The findings of this research are consistent in some respects with previous studies and differ in others. In terms of consistencies, they align with Asdzandi et al. (2013) regarding the exponential growth of productions in the field of media literacy at the global level and show that Iran has not been exempt from this global trend. They also align with Park et al. (2021) regarding the dominance of practical over theoretical approaches in this field and show that in Iran, skill-oriented and educational approaches also dominate over theoretical-research ones. Furthermore, they are fully consistent with Chemsheh Sohrabi et al. (2017) regarding the geographic concentration of publishing in Tehran. In terms of differences, unlike Repiso et al. (2011), who showed that co-authorship networks in media research in Spain are expanding, the findings of this research show that in Iran, the dominance of single authorship is still stable, and group collaborations in book authorship have a small share. Also, unlike Jeong et al. (2012), who emphasized the importance of quality and structure of educational resources, the findings show that in Iran, the structural diversity of books (especially in terms of volume and number of authors) is relatively low, and most productions are concentrated in a limited range of volume and authorship patterns. The findings can be explained within the framework of the concept of "industrialization of publishing without scientific institutionalization": the structure of publishing in this field has not only not become balanced but has added to previous inequalities; not only has the share of academic publishers not increased but, compared with other scientific fields, it has a negligible share, and the absence of structural deepening and the abundance of productions with limited theoretical quality can, in the long run, lead to damage to the scientific credibility of this field.

Conclusion
This study analyzed 333 books registered in the Iran National Book House database (SHAPA) from 2008 to 2025, examining production trends, formal characteristics, and structural inequalities in media literacy books in Iran. The findings showed that the field is experiencing exponential growth in written productions (compound annual growth rate of 31%, with 63% of total production concentrated in the last five years), indicating the transformation of media literacy into a pervasive social and educational need in Iranian society. However, this significant quantitative growth has not been accompanied by structural diversity and balanced development and has occurred within a context of structural inequalities. Three major structural inequalities dominate this field: first, the 88.4% dominance of private publishers and the absence of the academic system with a 4.2% share in the production of written knowledge in this field; second, extreme geographic concentration, with 62.4% of books published in Tehran (Gini coefficient = 0.73); and third, the dominance of 54.05% single authorship, which is inconsistent with the interdisciplinary nature of media literacy. In terms of volume, 36.7% of books are in the standard educational range of 101–150 pages, with 26% under 100 pages, confirming the predominance of a skill-practical over a theoretical-research orientation. This gap between production and institutionalization is the most important challenge facing the balanced development of media literacy in Iran and reveals the necessity of policy interventions, including the creation of official university syllabi, support for academic and provincial publishers, encouragement of group and interdisciplinary authorship, and qualitative research for content analysis of books. The limitations of the study include the reliance on registered book data (without electronic publication and self-published works), methodological limitations (focus on formal and bibliographic features without content analysis), temporal limitations (data up to 2025), and the lack of access to information on print runs, prices, sales, and audiences, which future research should address through content analysis, keyword co-occurrence analysis, and co-authorship network analysis.