Examining the Components of Citizenship Rights Reflected in the Qajar Era Press(Case Study: Akhtar Newspaper)

The expansion of Iran's communication with European and Western societies during the Qajar era indicates the transformation, change, and formation of citizenship rights concepts during this period. Based on this, by examining the texts and publications of this era, especially by studying the media materials of this era, we can observe how the discourse of citizenship rights was formed in the realm of thought of intellectuals and some scientific aspects of this period. It seems that one of the most influential factors in the formation of the concept of citizenship rights and its consequences during the Qajar era was the media, especially the press. Since the press is one of the earliest means of mass communication, serving as a tool for recognizing, introducing, explaining, and disseminating the subjects and concepts of human societies in the past and present, we have chosen this medium to analyze and study the thoughts of Qajar era intellectuals and reformers regarding the selected components of citizenship rights. In this study, the content of Akhtar newspaper was analyzed using quantitative content analysis. In this method, 12 issues of Akhtar newspaper from 1294 AH (the third year of its publication) were systematically selected, and all the data were processed using SPSS software and examined using the chi-square test to determine the relationship between variables. The results of this study show that the majority of published materials in Akhtar newspaper were in the form of news, and analytical articles had a significant share as well, mostly with a political focus. However, the majority of the newspaper's content was aimed at informing about the components of citizenship rights and modern culture, with less emphasis on orientation. If there was any orientation, it tended to be negative and dismissive of certain components.