An analysis of the policy implications of the Islamic revolution supreme Leader's thought about cyberspace and social networks

The main purpose of the research is to scrutiny the viewpoint of the Islamic Revolution leaeder, about cyberspace and intuition its policy implications. Therefore, the present study seeks to achieve this object, due to the contents published by him, including lectures, orders, letters and announcement about cyberspace and social networks. The overall research strategy is qualitative and the data collection method is library. To access cyberspace data, all speeches, orders, letters and notices of the Supreme Leader Searched in machine way by the keywords of cyberspace, internet, cyber, social networks, mobile and cellphone, on the website of the Office of Conservation and Publication. According to the search result, the date of the data is between the beginning of October 1998 and the end of June 1998. The analyze of the data is based on the Walcott’s thematic analysis method. Based on the analysis and interpretation of the themes extracted from the revolutionary leader's content about cyberspace and the themes network, his overall policy view about this subject is understandable in a civilized context, and the opportunity-based approach to cyberspace outweighs the threat-oriented view. In this view, three options can be deduced as follows: “ignoring the cyberspace as a large-scale phenomenon”, “premature entry or mere synchronization with cyberspace’s technological developments” and “deliberate and intentional entry”, based on the results of content analysis and interpretation and the revolutionary leader's civilized view about cyberspace, intelligently and purposeful interaction and entry into this space, is preferred option.