Qualitative Study on Empowering Aspects of Iranian Aged Population's Use of the Internet with Emphasis on Email

One of the social groups that have a marginalized status in many communities including Iran is the elderly people. One of the effective social measures to help aged people is to "empowering" them so that they can handle their own situation. Among the tools used to enable them, the Internet provides a broad perspective for social planners. Using the Internet allows aged people overcome many physical, geographical, economical, and social limitations. Among the web services, email is the most pervasive and popular online communicating activity of the elderly people. Thus, the main question is: “what grounds can create for empowering the elderly by using email”? To answer that question, 15 deep interviews were carried out with old people who used the Internet. After reviewing the data, the findings were presented in four categories: audience of communication, content of communication, level of communication, and content generation rate. The analysis of the findings show that the main audience of elderly people's emails is their family members and interacting with other aged people is not their priority; so, the content of their emails is largely personal conversation, although there are instances of forwarding emails with political and social content that is indicative of their social presence. But, ultimately, we have to say that using the web for empowering and improving the well being of old people needs social planning and policy making.