filtering

Virtual social networks play a crucial role in contemporary human life, offering numerous capabilities at a low cost. These platforms create technical features and possibilities of action, thus providing both opportunities and threats to their users. The policy of filtering social media has been implementing for over two decades in Iran. However, it has faced significant criticism. As an applied inquiry, the current study explored the ethical justification of filtering social media, emphasizing the importance of ethics in policymaking. Ethical considerations can actually make policies more acceptable to the public and less costly to implement. In this respect, the study aimed to investigate the ethical justification of social media restrictions from the user’s perspective, and to provide solutions for increasing acceptance of filtering policies and mitigating their adverse consequences. The study sought to answer the following question: What are the reactions and moral perspectives of social media users in Iran regarding filtering policy?

Literature Review:

There are several studies concerned with the social media control. For instance, Segura (2018) focused on how the current use of social media, particularly Facebook, functions as a community for public dialogue, which can be considered a key component of human rights. She argues that the public sphere relies on civic participation, but content moderation policies by platform owners disrupt this concept. Rosa (2022) contends that democratic political concepts are implicitly or explicitly based on an efficient arena for the formation of public opinion within a relevant media space. Therefore, social network policies must establish a reliable connection with the processes of public will formation. Spinello (2006) analyzed the costs, damages, and ethical issues of the Internet and cyberspace. He opposes direct government intervention, arguing that institutions such as schools, families, kindergartens, and libraries should replace the government in controlling immoral content. In his M.A. thesis, MovahhedAmjad (2013) examined the issue of filtering from the perspective of Islamic jurisprudence and Sharia. According to him, the necessity of filtering is relative, being appropriate for some but not for others. In an article titled “Filtering and the Problem of Ethical Conflict,” Shahriari and Rahmati (2016) explored the duties of users and the government regarding filtering. They discussed several key dichotomies such as protecting privacy vs. doing good to others, or punishing wrongdoers vs. not punishing the innocent.

The study used the library research and fieldwork to collect the data. A descriptive method was employed for the library research, while interviews were used for fieldwork activities. The relevant data was collected through semistructured interviews with active users of social media. To formulate the interview questions, evidence was gathered from the speeches and interviews by highranking proponents of filtering in the country. The content was categorized into six criteria: belief, political security, societal security, public morality and modesty, economic security, and law and order. Each criterion was then assigned a main question in the interview, with the questions being largely standardized. Initially, interviewees were asked about their personal characteristics, including age, marital status, education, and internet usage. Following this, approximately 14 questions were posed based on the six criteria. Theoretical saturation was achieved after conducting 25 interviews. Then, the data was analyzed using a qualitative and inductive approach.Concerning the theoretical framework, the study used liberal theories of public justification that favor public reason, along with the idea of the common good advocated by communutarism. To avoid bias, the research took into account two important perspectives on mandatory laws. The first emphasizes individual rights and the necessity of justification before coercion, a viewpoint represented by liberals who advocate for common reason. The second perspective is rooted in communutarism, which prioritizes the common good and asserts that the government can limit certain individual rights to secure or preserve the common good. The ethicality of filtering media content is based on the theory of common good endorsed by communutarism, while considering it unethical aligns with the liberal idea of common reason.

Results and Discussion :

In the fieldwork phase, indepth interviews were conducted with several students from Allameh Tabataba’i University. According to the results, the vast majority of respondents did not consider the filtering policy to be ethical, based on the modern ethical approach that assesses the morality of actions by their correctness. Regarding the impact of providing filtering evidence to users, some respondents reported a slight influence on their opinions, which highlights the role and effect of persuasion. The respondents identified several points of conflict between ethical standards and filtering, including the lack of justification and persuasion, violation of individual rights and human dignity, harm to personal interests, ineffectiveness and impracticality, potential for violation and corruption, inequitable access to cyberspace resources, unfairness, and a weakening of integrity and transparency.

Based on the results and discussion, the study concluded with several practical suggestions to mitigate the consequences of filtering. It emphasized the need for a systematic educational program to familiarize users with cyberspace, focusing on education and training. Building a culture among users is seen as essential, alongside using limited and smart filtering methods. The study also recommended that control of cyberspace be handed over to families, and suggested shifting the government’s perspective from a threatoriented approach to social media to one that focuses on opportunities. Additionally, authorities should adhere to the same restrictions placed on messengers, and there should be transparency regarding profit motives in filtering, such as rents from selling filter breakers. The interests and livelihood of users in cyberspace should be considered, and a longterm plan needs to be developed to create highquality and secure indigenous messaging platforms.

Considering the feeling of need to access information and news and correspondingly expanding Iranians' acceptance of virtual space and social networks, as well as the need of intelligence organizations for this access, attention to its threats and opportunities should also be considered. One of the characteristics of some non-Iranian social networks is the unavailability of the information of its users or administrators. This issue can severely threaten national security. From this point of view, the statesmen and policy makers of the virtual space are determined to minimize the amount of these threats with different solutions and methods. Among the policies adopted in this field is the filtering policy, which seems to have failed to significantly prevent employees from joining non-Iranian social networks and, as a result, maintain a safe space in the internal cyber borders. Therefore, in this research, we decided to investigate the security threats of these networks on intelligence organizations and filtering policies in Iran and investigate the factors of its complete lack of success.

The research method is descriptive-analytical and the data has been collected and analyzed using the library method.

It seems that globalization and the requirements for global identification have caused the tendency of Iranians and intelligence organizations (in line with their mission) to foreign virtual networks, as well as the lack of sufficient infrastructure and written documents in the field of virtual space, as well as the political culture of Iranians, policy makers and Pro-global village and liberal-minded managers have made the filtering policy difficult; Therefore, in this field, it poses various threats to the intelligence community and Iranian society; At the end, suggestions, strategies and solutions are presented.

As the Internet has expanded and public interest in virtual spaces has grown, countries around the globe have implemented various policies in this area. Acknowledging the importance of this issue, the Islamic Republic of Iran has also developed policies pertaining to cyberspace, as evidenced by the "Strategic Document of the Islamic Republic of Cyberspace," which serves as a foundational guideline. Despite the emergence of numerous analyses on this topic, many of these works reveal significant shortcomings. This research seeks to identify the missing components within Iran's virtual space policy framework to cultivate a perspective that effectively aligns with these policies and achieves the intended objectives. The methodology adopted in this study is descriptive-analytical, relying on documentary and bibliographic resources. This article draws upon the theoretical framework articulated by the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, who has consistently underscored the importance of public participation in national affairs. It critiques the directive nature of current policies and the dominant top-down approach. The findings suggest that policymakers' disregard for crucial elements such as "persuasion," "legitimization," and "feedback" within the policy cycle—factors that the Supreme Leader has consistently emphasized—has hindered the ability to cultivate public satisfaction and has contributed to limited success in this domain.

The problem of this study is to analyze change in content policy. For this purpose, telegram filtering is analyzed in the Kingdon's multiple steam frameworks, and the results of opening the policy window for each of the triple streams are presented What are the reasons for the failure of domestic instant messengers despite the government's policy of "supporting" them, is the main question. Based on this, the Kingdon's multiple steam frameworks as an analytical lens has selected and a set of policy documents, specialized news and argumentations related to the filtering of telegrams in the period from June 2017 to August 2016 were selected as analytical sources. By using deductive content analysis method we collected 113 main themes in 19 organizational themes and 5 comprehensive themes to analysis Telegram filtering. In the research results section, first, analyze how the entrepreneur of policy converge the multiple stream. In the second section, we argued the inconsistencies and imbalances in support of industry chain components, has led to the growth of asymmetric one, Not to create of the value chain in the natural context as the causes of the failure of domestic instant messengers.

Cyberspace is a socio-political and technological field with unique features that goes beyond the territorial and legal borders of countries and is mostly governed by the private sector, but developed countries with mechanisms such as cooperation with international organizations and other countries, They are trying to influence this space. This fact has led to the introduction of the most effective model of governance in the control of societies in order to maintain relative freedoms in spite of controls. The research method in this article has been done by selecting a purposeful sample and analyzing the collected information. Therefore, how the Saudi government deals with the opposition in cyberspace has been studied as a case study. The findings show that the current rule of cyberspace is dominated by global arrogance, and the government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, through the power of censorship, filtering and control of cyberspace, has limited the possibility for revolutionaries and protesters to benefit from this platform. However, recognizing and organizing the opposition in this space, as the best communication platform in the contemporary world, can play an accelerating role in the process of Islamic awakening in the Arab world.

This article addresses the main question of how cyberspace policymaking in Iran can be modified in order to achieve the desired goals in the country's upstream documents. So, the intention is to analyze cyberspace policymaking in the Islamic Republic of Iran. The study suggests that the major policy-making in this regard is both positive and negative. In the meantime, negative policies with mechanisms such as, deterrent planning in the field of legislation, clearing of virtual space (including blocking and filtering) and positive policies with mechanisms such as production and content management, increased Media literacy and immunization based on localization have been implemented in the country. However, the desperate failure of building a National Information Network as the communication infrastructure of the country's cyberspace, the failure to produce appropriate internal content and the increase of media literacy in the country which are all mechanisms for implementing positive policymaking in the country, in addition to the inadequacy of the rules set out in the field of cyberspace and the failure of the filtering project due to the inefficiency of blocking and filtering tools, we witness an inefficiency in policy making and the lack of strategic, principled and technical planning and management. There is a need for a long-term control of cyber space in the country and to reform the cyber space policy in IRA on the way to achieving most of the goals outlined in the country's upstream documents; this requires changing the existing balance from a negative and a directive perspective to a positive and bottom-up perspective.

Refining cyberspace means purifying, filtering, and making safe cyberspace. The aim is to create restriction to or prevent having access to a discourse, a dramatic performance, or a combination of discourse and dramatic performance in cyberspace. Among those who play a role in cyberspace, the states and their policies are of great importance. As far as the states are concerned, to what extent can they play a role in refining cyberspace?
What are the scope of attempts in refining and what are the jurisprudential rules governing the refinement of cyberspace? Although in the treasure of Imamiyyah fiqh, the primary principle is the principle of information and communication, the principle at issue is looked at from the religious themes. For various fiqhi rules, laying the foundations of the legal system of the Islamic Republic of Iran, indicate that the cyberspace is refined on the basis of religious themes. The main question of this research is “what are the fiqhi rules regarding the refinement of cyberspace in the legal system of the Islamic Republic of Iran?” The findings of the research consist in certain fiqhi rules such as “rule of “prohibition of detriment” or “principle of harm”, the rule of ‘the necessity of preserving the Islamic government’, the rule of ‘the prohibition of cooperation on sin’, the rule of ‘the necessity of preventing possible loss’, the rule of ‘pacta sunt servanda’ or ‘honor your contracts’, the rule of “rejection the faithless’ dominance” over the faithful.

Cyberspace, along with important opportunities, poses security, social, and cultural threats. The Islamic Republic of Iran’s policy has sought to consider filtering as the most important means of imposing restrictions on having access to the corrupt websites which are opposed to or inconsistent with the Islamic laws and regulations. This article seeks to make a jurisprudential analysis of the issue in question, and carry out a critical assessment of jurisprudential arguments for it resulting in lending support to and bolstering the necessity of using filtering corrupt websites. Though using filtering some websites seems to be against the import of the maxim of “prohibition of detriment” or principle of “harm” and implies such detriment as inaccessibility to the possibly existing scientific information
in the website, decisions not to use filtering such websites for such reasons as religious, doctrinal, cultural, and political aberrations are opposed to the arguments for the maxim of the negation of “domination over the faithful by the faithless”, prohibition of ‘keeping misguiding books’, the rule of ‘expediency’ and that of ‘enjoining the right (good) and forbidding the wrong (evil)’. In case the argument for the necessity of using filtering conflicts with the necessity of not using filtering the aberrant websites, what is decided on is naturally in favor of something with the least harm.