Game of structure: An analysis of the history of social media usage in Iran

This paper tries to evaluate the relationship between society structures and social media usage in Iran. Regarding the popularity of social media in Iran, doing studies into this field and its diverse dimensions is necessary to shed light on Iranian users’ life on social media. Despite this fact, there are not much research which have been done about the users’ motivations and processes in using social media. Therefore, we tried to fill this gap in this study. We based this research on Giddens’ structuration theory and carried out the study by doing qualitative interviews with 11 heavy old social media users. Furthermore, purposive, snowball and critical cases samplings were combined to gather the sample. Analyzing the interviews, several themes were emerged. We summarized and presented them into several parts. First, we identified the preferred social media in Iran. Then, we listed the reasons which have made them popular social media in Iran. Next, we explored the processes and procedures in using social media. In the same time, we explained the changes in these processes and procedures and identified the reasons behind them. Finally, we analyzed the mutual relationship between society structures and social media usage in Iran. In fact, we tried to assess how structures shape social media usage and were altered and changed by that.