Analysis of Cyberspace and Poetry Today; Phenomenology of Poets’ Lived Experience

Since the beginning of the 21st century and with the arrival of "Web2" in Iran, technological changes and the development of cyberspace have brought about tangible changes in various areas of social and cultural life, including literature and especially poetry. After the spread of blogging in Iran, the production of content in Persian in blogs clearly increased so that Persian became one of the ten languages in which most blogs in the world were written in those languages (Razi, 2018). Many literary blogs were created, and literary blogging became popular during the first decade of the 21st century. At the end of the first decade and the beginning of the second decade of the 21st century and with the development of social networks and media, the activity of poets in this field continued. Personal or group webpages and channels with the theme of poetry and literature have been created on various social media platforms. the study aimed to know how cyberspace has affected poetry, and how poets evaluate this impact as beneficial or detrimental to poetry.

A qualitative research method was applied based on the lived experience of poets. In other words, a phenomenological approach was used to gain new data. The phenomenological approach is based on the assumption that the lifeworld around us is the combination of me and the others. So the world is something common. In the phenomenological approach we are talking about a world that humans have experienced, not an abstract world that is far from real life. One problem in interdisciplinary research of literature and communication is the lack of local theories. Phenomenology gives us a wise and broad possibility to reach a theory and can fill this gap. Cyberspace and new media and communication technologies have emerged in the real world. Poets have used this capacity since the era of blogging and have had experiences of the good and bad of blogs and social networks and social media. To understand these years of experience and its results, the poets themselves are the best reference for retelling experiences and expressing their perceptions of this influence. Researchers must use these experiences from living in cyberspace to reach a theory, based on facts. Using the same approach, it was also tried to reach a conceptual model that would compensate for the lack of local theory in this area.

In this research, a purposeful sampling was used. Using a biographical study method, we identified poets who have relative acceptance and fame among the audience and are also active in cyberspace and have many followers on social networks and their poems are shared on social media. We then sent questionnaires to the poets and asked them about the impact of cyberspace in various areas such as text, audience, poets' interaction with the audience and themselves, poetry publishing media, and poetry effects and feedback. Eighty three poets answered the questionnaires. Then, using a systematic approach in grounded theory method, after extracting raw data and categorization, we reached the axial coding of data. To formulate the conceptual model, we named the central category "technological anxiety of poets" and based on it, other categories and subcategories were extracted from the answers and a model was presented.

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of cyberspace on poetry. Based on this, it was found that poets believe that cyberspace has provided a space for the presentation of worthless poems and plagiarism, rather than the publication of valuable poems. Cyberspace has contributed to the reputation of poets on the one hand, and on the other hand, it has removed the monopoly of producing and delivering poetry from intellectuals and elites. Poets acknowledged that the circle of poetry audiences has expanded due to the expansion of cyberspace, but many of these audiences read poetry only as a hobby. Most poets still consider the book as the reference for elites and main medium of poetry, but at the same time believe that cyberspace has reduced the possibility of the influence of the publishing and media mafia and censorship in the process of literary creation. Acknowledging the new possibilities that poetry has acquired through cyberspace, poets are interested in the previously established and accustomed situation (production monopoly, professional stratification, rhetoric and non-interactive media). We defined the poets' prediction of the continuation of this trend in three approaches: 1. The integration approach, according to which the weak poems that have many fans in cyberspace these days, will form the main and dominant current of Iranian poetry; 2. The continuation approach. The Persian poetry is considered too powerful to be defeated by cyberspace; 3. The combination approach, which believes that the poets should have the opportunity to provide the poetry and the readers should be given the chance to select and cyberspace is the key. It is also important that the poets make efforts to improve the reader's literary and media literacy of their audience’s knowledge there.

The conclusion is that poets have not been able to use the possibility of dialogue, interaction, and decentralization of cyberspace. They have become accustomed to centrist and non-interactive media, they have been unable to create a public literary sphere. For this reason, it is suggested that poets in cyberspace not only advertise and share their poetry, but also try to acquaint the audience with the criteria of good and quality poetry by creating channels, pages, and groups of poetry. It is also suggested that poets engage in dialogue and interaction with their audiences and recognize different tastes to have representatives outside the predetermined and established sphere of literary production. The audience are recommended to use this opportunity to improve their literary knowledge. Both sides of this communication must enter into a real dialogue based on mutual recognition. Instead of hiding or eliminating the other side, they should help to understand each other and promote the literary literacy of the society.