Moral Contrasts Concerning Interactions of Social Media Users: A Study of Iranian User Comments on Six Events Displayed on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram

In this paper, six events displayed on social media and the discussions of a large group of Iranian users regarding moral aspects of the same events have been studied. Understanding changing concept of media ethics and morals in user-based new media sphere was our purpose. These six events, started on ‘Facebook’, ‘Instagram’ and ‘Youtube’ social platforms (between 1392sh and 1394sh), but users’ discussion continued and expanded on other media and websites. The study was conducted using qualitative methodology and explanatory approach and our analysis has been based on user comments on these six events. Among the thousands of user’ comments about each event, 396 comments wereselected for analysis. Purposeful sampling conducted in two levels using round trip between data gathering and analysis. Using coding and categorization user comments, these interactions were provided for analysis. These interactions have been presented as qualitative modelemerged from data, entitled: ‘pyramid of user’ activities in moral contrasts of social media’. The results showed that backgrounds of moralcontrasts in this space, include public morality, professional ethics and the morals of social media. Based on the proposed model, users adopt four different positions in their interactions. They use what called in this article ‘reserves supported moral contrasts’ to interact with each other.