Precarity and Possibility

Abstract At first glance, Iran and Lebanon may appear to have very little in common when it comes state intervention the media economy. The Iranian government oversees nearly every aspect of production, distribution, exhibition, while Lebanese exercises relatively oversight offers no financial or infrastructural support country’s robust creative industries. Given divergent approaches regulating Lebanon, we might expect each yield vastly different labor conditions. Yet this article, I argue opposite. demonstrate how two extremes foster informal practices that are remarkably similar. By bringing together these unlikely case studies, advocate for informality as a constitutive feature Middle Eastern media. Such claim expands growing body scholarship on by accounting triangulation informality, regulation, worker subjectivity.