Reviewing relationship between Internet and political culture of university students A case study by Azad University of Takestan

Nowadays, Internet and its impact as a modern media have drawn the attention of scholars. Various cultural fields, especially the active role of students in political and social developments, have added to the importance of this topic. Taking the rapid increase of Internet users in Iran and high percentage of population of university students, studying various aspects of such impacts have become essential.
This research work is aimed at examining the relationship between Internet and political culture of students of Takestan Azad University and finding answers to relation between Internet and their tendency to take part in elections and political participation.
In this case study, based on sample taking method, 420 students of Takestan University were selected. The tools used for this study is written questionnaire in the Likret Scale and based on views of scholars and authentic scientific sources and natively is reliable and its validity has been examined by Cronbach Alpha method and its reliability coefficient is %82 which shows the high credibility of the questionnaire. Hypotheses were compared at the meaningful of 5 percent. Findings show that there is a meaningful relationship with low correlation between public domain of Internet and political participation, but between Internet and taking part in elections there was no meaningful relation. Based on these findings, it could be said that Internet and Cyberspace, despite their unique potentials, in shaping the tendency of students toward political participation, have no influence in itself in shaping attitudes of students about political participation and taking part in elections