Sociological Analysis of the Effects of Using Cyber Space on Oral Culture (Research Case: Isfahan city)

Changes in the relationships within family is indicative of losing traditional ties between modern people. Dilution of emotional relations inside the family, between wives and husbands and their children, and superficial interactive relationships among them show that modern citizens are not anymore attached to many of their old traditional ties. One main reason of this is communication technologies, which, like any other change caused by technology, bring about big transformations. We cannot any more see family members talking to each other during the day. Due to the importance of this issue, the present article aims at studying the influence of cyber space on oral culture, using theories of communication, family, and globalization in sociology.

This is a survey study. The research population is consisted of families who have children over 15 years of age in Isfahan city, whose number is 579302. The independent variable is use of cyber space with two criteria (quality and quantity of the use), and dependent variable is oral culture with two criteria (oral communication and exchange of oral literature among parents and children). Sample size includes 384 individuals, which was calculated using quota sampling method. A research-made questionnaires was designed and distributed among research sample after it was verified for reliability and validity tests.

In this research, the effect of using cyber space on oral culture, namely, verbal communication has been studied. The hypotheses of this study were tested by structural modeling. The independent variable with two dimensions of quantity and quality of using cyber space and the dependent variable of oral communication with two dimensions of verbal communication between spouses and verbal communication between parents and their children were examined. The results showed that the quality and quantity of using cyber space have influenced oral communication and culture of family negatively, in the sense that when there is more usage of cyber space, the quality and quantity of oral communication diminish. This is so because of a lack in common aims among family members and also lack of transferring cultural traits from one generation to the next. We believe that sufficient verbal interaction between family members is necessary to transfer cultural heritage and experiences of parents to their children, providing therefore a desirable emotional atmosphere at home, which would strengthen feelings of support and protection in a way that family members, especially children, do not feel left alone. In such a situation, a collective spirit develops inside the family, which, in turn, increases trust and social capital. However, the study of our study showed that oral communication between family members has decreased compared to the past. Finally, it should be pointed out that oral culture and its advantages cannot be ignored, in the same way that the effective and beneficial role of cyber space should not be trivialized.