نشریه دین و ارتباطات
سال پانزدهم شماره 1 (بهار و تابستان 1387)

A message is immortalized when given an artistic form, so it is inevitable to do the same with Islamic concepts. Besides, art is deemed to hold a noble status and its extensive and profound relation with other fields makes it necessary to give it deserving consideration. The Islamic Revolution has to adopt artistic means for its propagation since it is based on the Revelation and the Infallible Traditions and has as its motto the unity of piety and politics and comprehensiveness in every personal and public domain. This requirement becomes especially manifest when we see the historical stance of the Islamic Revolution that inherits the instructions of all prophets coming face to face with other ideologies that despite their large number share a humanistic worldview. Art is thus the most efficient means of transmitting the elevated thoughts inherent in the Revolution to the coming generation of people or to other geographical and epistemological areas, and this is due to the fact that art is the shared language of all nations.Recognizing the fact that the thoughts of the leaders of revolutions play a remarkable part in setting the directions, the idea of velayat-e-faqih is to be attributed the same significance in Islamic Revolution. In the case of the Supreme Leader of our Revolution, we should assert his extensive authority on various fields of Iranian and global art and literature, hence the necessity of more scrutiny in his thoughts for the sake of delineating his guidelines concerning art.

This article illustrates challenges, threats, capacities, opportunities and prospect of the Iranian press in the next decade. It first glances at the present condition of the country’s press especially in regard to their statistical stance, variety, multiplicity, and content and then proceeds to briefly mention the shortcomings, threats, and challenges of the press. Challenges of all kinds; economic, professional, managerial and others are dealt with each in its own turn.The prospect of the press stresses separately on this point that any type of policy in the press should in some way convert threats and challenges to opportunities and transform these into capacities. The press is an arena where the minutest negligence may turn opportunities into challenges. The last section of the article takes notice of the thoughtful exigencies of the press policy that could lead to development.

Since in looking at communication from a process-oriented point of view, the topic of “effect” finds prominence, this article aims at examining the theories of mass media effects, the changes they have undergone, and the ways in which media influence audiences. Meanwhile, focusing on the contents of authentic Islamic texts, including the Quran and authentic Hadiths coming down to us from the Prophet Muhammad and the holy Imams (peace be upon them), the topic of positive effects on audiences will be discussed. In the field of media studies, much research has been done and various discussions have been presented about the effects of mass media on audience attitudes, assumptions and behaviors, and about their depth and intensity, all appearing in an eighty-year time span. It must be pointed out that almost all such studies agree on the effects of the media as a basic assumption, although there is no consensus about its intensity and power as yet. From a commonsensical point of view, mass media have some degree of effect on ethical issues, beliefs and behaviors.The historical process of considering the effects of media dates back to early 20th century, beginning with the presumption that media have strong effects on audience members (hypodermic needle theory), later replaced with limited-effect theory. During the same time, a two-step flow hypothesis was also presented. In the 1950s and 60s we can see a re-emergence of powerful-effect model, followed by Gerbner’s cultivation theory, McLuhan’s theories concerning media effects, negotiated media influence, spiral of silence, etc.

This article, being a methodological text in the field of ideology analysis in the press, deals with the representation of ideology in communicative texts so that it brings to light the relation between structural elements of ideology therein. One of the questions is how communicative texts are affected by the existing ideological structure of the society. The second is whether there is any relationship between the language used in communicative texts and the ideological structure or social organization. Taking the contemporary Iran as a case in point, we realize that its press are under the influence of the political, cultural and economic contexts to the extent that the interaction between communicative context and texts have caused the continuation of the ideology- based press system. Our theoretical claim is that the press of every society shape their identity under the impact of the existing ideologies. That is why the article first offers a theoretical model for the study of the ideological structure. Then the role of the latter's components in the continuation of ideological relations in the press are discussed. Since there has been no practical method for the ideological analysis in communicative studies, we have presented a model for that. This model could be used further as a basis for later communicative studies when discussing the relation between communicative texts and the reproduction of ideological relations. To this end, first there is a reference to the concept of ideology as considered by Thomson, Goldman and Manheim, and then a new method is introduced which can be used as a suitable framework for the study of ideology structure in communicative texts especially the press.

Sociology has been transferred from Europe to America and has therefore assumed an American identity. One of the most recent research fields in sociology is epistemological sociology and the American form of this is a special one that requires special cultural and communicative policy. This article is to shed light on the American epistemological sociology with the aim of recognizing an intercultural policy based on it.

The article is a study of the features and functions of small media as compared with the big or traditional ones and illustrates the considerable differences between the two despite some seeming similarities at first glance. By small media it means those acting at lower scales in regard to producing organization, distribution method and addressing the audience with the help of new communication technologies. This smallness not only provides better opportunity for quicker production, but it lessens the gap between the producer and the audience leading to the simultaneous presence of producer/consumer.

Virtual education is one of the achievements of information society. Promoting human knowledge, this form of education leads us in the direction of a knowledgeable, knowledge-oriented society, where “knowledge” rather than “work and services” is exchanged. It is predictable that the advantages of electronic education and its methods will lead to an ever- increasing number of internet users all over the world, as just having access to a computer and connecting to the World Wide Web would now enable one to enter the knowledge society.“Digital gap” and “cultural divide” are two factors restricting access to electronic education for citizens living in developing, poor countries, depriving them of the advantages of this form of education. Studying a number of developing countries, including Islamic Republic of Iran, helps us better understand the challenges existing in this field and plan for the future.In the end, the writer proposes a cooperation between the world countries and international organizations, such as UNESCO, to help remove barriers on the way of development of the poor countries.