Online Social Networks and Elimination of obscenity of Vulgar Content: a Focused Study on Persian Twitter in Iran

Development of online social networks in recent years and creation of more ease for accessing to these networks via smart phones, has influenced people’s culture especially young people who use these networks daily. Among these networks, Twitter has different role because its access is prohibited in Iran and also many of its users have anonymous activity in it. So it creates an environment that users can talk in it more freely or as Hirschi says, there is less social control on these users. The lower social control in Twitter, may increase the amount of vulgar contents in it. So, understanding the role of Twitter in using vulgar contents as an abnormal behavior, is important for assessing the normative effects of using Twitter on its users. In this study, the content of Tweeter, from 1388 to 1396, is analyzed by using keyword-based data mining and descriptive-statistical method. Findings from data mining on 82 million tweets show that users have increasingly tweeted vulgar contents in early years of using Twitter in Iran. However, since 1392, the rate of using these contents have been relatively constant, and only 3 to 4 percent of all tweets have had vulgar contents. Therefore, in contrary to the first hypothesis, Twitter has not eliminated the obscenity of vulgar content. The reason can be the development of new values in this virtual community and the increase of social control, which is the result of more tweeting with real names and badges.