فصلنامه علوم اجتماعی
سال نوزدهم شماره 2 (پیاپی 57، تابستان 1391)

Nowadays internet and computer games have been promoted around the world. Promotion of any information technology has its own positive and negative consequences in societies. Virtual addiction, a negative consequence of internet usage, has been increased in some of big cities in our country and has created a lot of problems for individuals, families and society. The aim the present study is to investigate rate of virtual addiction among teenagers and young people of urban areas of Qom province and, to examine what affects it. The present paper is a descriptive-analytical research (in relationship form) in which two documentary and survey (questionnaire) methods are applied. Statistical population included 12 to 30 years-old teenagers and young people of Qom province urban areas. 650 subjects were selected as sampling population. Questionnaires were completed through doing door-to-door survey or referring to Net Cafés and Game Nets. Findings of the research show that 51 percent of teenagers and youth don’t suffer virtual addiction; however, 42 percent of them are prone to it and 7 percent are addicted. Virtual addiction index has been created by combination of emotional, behavioral, and cognitive addiction indices. The obtained results from multi-variable regression analysis showed that “Feeling social support” (Beta=0.29) had the highest correlation and thus, most relation with virtual addiction. In next steps, variables of “Feeling self-worth” (Beta= 0.25) and “Keeping in touch with friends” (Beta=0.18) were effective on virtual addiction. Results of “age” variable (Beta=-0.14) showed that Internet doesn’t amuse young people as much as it amuses teenagers. The obtained results also showed that employment and marriage among them has a regulatory role; because they cause these people become less dependent on internet (for doing unnecessary tasks).

In this paper, after defining social networks and indicating their differences with social groups, we focus on studying the historical evolutions of social networks in form of three eras or three generations. In the first generation that goes back to before invention of postal stamp, telegraph, and telephone, social networks in the whole world had more or less similar characteristics and included a very large number of small limited domain networks. Later on, the invention of communications technologies such as telephone and telegraph started to connect those small networks to form larger network with bigger domains. These technologies became popular very quickly in developed countries and led to the formation of the second generation of social networks. However, in developing countries, such as Iran, the use of those technologies was limited to only a very small group of the residents of the capital city, who were literate and wealthy, making them rather luxury devices. This paper shows that even after about one century since their invention, these technologies were not in a position in developing countries to create the same unified type large social networks as in developed countries. As a result, the structure and the application of the second generation social networks was different in the developed and developing countries. Next, we show that after the invention of the Internet and cellular phones, the third generation of social networks started to be formed in developed countries, with a similar trend but with some new dimensions. In Iran, although the Internet helped to create the so-called virtual social networks, but the usage of modern technologies in the Internet has still been mostly limited to the residents of the capital and big cities. Such usage is not even popular among all literature people in those big cities, rather only those people who have digital literacy. In contrary to the Internet, while there are still about ten thousand villages that don’t have post office or land telephone line, the use of cellular phone had an excessive grown in Iran.Based on the above observations, this paper concludes that the existing social networks in Iran in fact consist of three scattered sub-networks that include a minority of first generation social networks, a majority of the second generation social networks, and again a minority of third generation social networks. Interestingly, although the third generation social networks in Iran does not have the same type of infrastructure that is available in developing countries; it has had a chance to be connected to the virtual social networks in developing countries through the Internet, unlike the localized first and second Iranian generations of social networks. A clear example for such global connection was the use of the third generation social networks to largely send out the photos and videos of the 2009 protests to the rest of the global virtual social network across the world. In the end, the paper concludes that the co-existence of these three generations of social networks in Iran does not mean that they form a unified network. Therefore, it is important to study the software and hardware interactions both inside and cross these three social networks, when the communication researchers address the topic of social networks in Iran.

Identifying developments, changes, and consistencies in leisure culture is a major indicator in understanding cultural and social changes. Leisure is an experience for representing and diffusing cultural values that far from elitist cultural orientations provides a picture of everyday’s life experiences and contexts. Drawing on cultural studies tradition and relying on some secondary notes and sources produced by travelers writings in the 18th and 19th century, the present paper aims to present a picture of the experience, meanings and perception of Iranians from their free time and to identify the conditions affecting it. My argument is that Iran’s pre-modern leisure culture witness a break both with its traditional and modern contexts. In the historical period covered, there has been no spontaneous development towards creating discipline, differentiation, professionalization, and commercialization of an acceptable and native leisure culture. The historical and cultural distance of Iranian society with the Western modern leisure, has revealed the inadequacies of Western conceptualization and therefore the necessity to attend cultural history to trace popular culture developments.

By development of new communication technologies and Internet global spread, the world came into new area through some subjects such as “Information Society” and “network society” and varied from what in the past. In the past 2 decades ago, in the line with development of information technology and communication and more and more internet penetration among the people, the networks and cell phone operators have investigate to find out which theory are appropriate for explanation cyber space and its social and political affects. Among these approaches, Jurgen Habermas’ theories about public sphere are highly significant. The main purpose of this research is to discover that public sphere is formed by which elements. Is the public sphere shaped within the cyber space? Or is it right to take into account weblogs and social networks as public sphere?“survey” is the method used by this research. Basic studies determined public access, public dialogue and public action as the main variants of the research as well index for each variant. After that, as per Communication master’s guides 24 items was settled to investigate questionnaires of this research regard index and variants of public sphere. At the last stage, these 24 times as well as some other helpful questions for analyzing were contained in the questionnaires. Then the papers gave out to those who were under question order to collect the required info. According to the findings, the public sphere through cyber space is formed by 3 main variants and the weblogs and social networks are samples of public sphere through cyber space. Additionally, the findings shows that the theory of public sphere is applicable for cyber space but the public sphere is a more departed area far from the additional public sphere due to features of cyber space and computer mediation communication through IT.

Social trust, a basis of social capital, is the most important concept in contemporary social science. Taking evolutions and complexities of contemporary world into consideration, this concept is of a significant importance in social research. In other words, information and communication advances, especially Internet, have had tremendous effects on different dimensions of individual and social life. In this field, thinkers such as Giddens, Putnam and Fukuyama have stressed on contribution of new communication technology like Internet to social capital and social trust. The primary aim of the present paper is to study relations between Internet addiction and social trust. It is a survey study and data collection is done through questionnaires. Reliability and validity of measuring variables, i.e. Internet addiction and social trust variable, were tested through Cronbach’s Alpha Coefficient. The resulted figures were respectively %85 and %82, confirming reliability and validity. Statistical population of the research included Kashan University students in 1389-90 educational year. Using stratified random sampling as well as Cochran sampling formula, 370 subjects were chosen as sample population. Findings show that there is a significant relation between internet addiction and social trust. Moreover, statistical results of Pierson correlation coefficient, regression analysis and path analysis confirm the significant correlation between research variables.

In this paper, the release of news related to Afghanistan in the Iranian press is analyzed within the framework of the theory of media agenda setting and using the method of quantitative content analysis.The results indicate that there is no significant difference in the coverage of Afghanistan news in the newspapers of Kayhan, Jomhouri-ye Eslami and Ettelaat. In fact, all three newspapers have followed the same criteria for selecting news related to Afghanistan. About 70 percent of Afghan news appertain to two categories of "military affairs, war and political violence" and "foreign relations".However, a comparison of “news contents” among the three decades, from 1358 to 1388 (1979-2009), indicate that there is a significant difference between these periods regarding “news priorities”.The paper shows that there is no significant difference between news of Afghanistan and Iran-Afghanistan in terms of "front-page headline" as well as the use of "visual elements" (photo, box, color printing, negatives, halftones, and cartoons) for highlighting Afghanistan news compared to other stories. The degree of importance and priority between Iran-Afghanistan common news items and separate news items are different.

One of the important aspects of the Islamic Revolution of Iran, ignored by the researchers inside and outside of Iran, is the models of recruitment among the active political groups in the last 15 years of the Shah regime. Our case study is the Islamic Coalition groups since their recruitment method was different from guerrilla and fundamental Islamic groups. The method of research is qualitative and its type is historical. Interview is the main data collection tool. Analysis method (including the analysis of the books, articles, documents etc) as a complimentary method, is also used. Findings of the research indicate that Imam Khomeini’s charisma was highly influential in the formation of the group and their recruitment of members. Most of members belonged to middle and lower middle class. Largely they were traditional and religious bazaaris. The group could not attract other social classes. The group’s recruitment model was unique and local in accordance with Imam’s recommendations.