فصلنامه رسانه
سال بیست و ششم شماره 3 (پیاپی 100، پاییز 1394)

Thirty years have passed since the ratification and implementation of the latest press law in our country. Besides the necessity of revision of human laws, development in new communication technologies, the diversity of newly emerging media and also the experience of implementing the existing laws, are all reasons that have extend the necessity of research and formulation of a comprehensive media law from theoretical level to the legal sphere. To achieve a desirable press law and to have access to a law defendable for all the media there is no option but recognition of the current challenges and needs of tomorrow. Absence of comprehensiveness and balance between rights and boundaries, dispersion and abundance of media laws, ignorance towards self-regulating functions and professional morale, not enjoying guilds and civic supervision, and ultimately not observing the method of law codification are the five major challenges and necessities this paper has paid attention to and by presenting some samples, proposed mechanisms for getting out of them.

During the recent years, new approaches to journalism have taken shape, including citizen journalism, peace journalism, dialogue journalism, environment journalism and health journalism. Here, activist journalism and utilization of alternative media have assumed a special status in development communication. This paper intends to review the formation of this kind of journalism in Iran. Since the first instances of this kind of communication have occurred in the field of cultural heritage, this paper deals with the same subject. For starters, the course of evolution and formation of activist media and their status in the new media environment are reviewed, while relying on their communication foundations in the two important theories of the network society by Manuel Castells and participatory communication by Jan Servaes, where the concept of activist journalism has been explained. Then, the mechanism of mediatization of cultural heritage in Iran, part of which complied with activist and alternative journalism, has been studied and experts, specialists, journalists and activists in this field have been interviewed. This research depicts the status quo and the ideal situation of activist journalism in the field of cultural heritage within the framework of two models by using grounded theory.

The media sphere* is full of opportunities and challenges. A proper understanding and recognition of them provides the chance for confrontation or utilization. All of these stem from the existence of drives, which affect interaction between the internal and external environments of the sphere. Some of these drives are common throughout the world and some might belong to a specific media sphere. As in our sphere, ideas and narrations different from the globally dominant ones are among important factors or drives in developments of this sphere and existence of opportunities and challenge ensuring from it. There are several challenges in our media sphere that can be considered from a strategic approach. From this point of view, each of them is a strategic problem preventing the media from performing their duties competently, national media in particular. This paper intends to remind challenges of the media sphere as strategic problems or plights, the solution of which is explainable within this same framework.

The rules of book layout and formatting are determined by the package in question. For instance, the formatting of a folio book which should have been put on book rest for reading, was very different from a book in Janamazi formatting (a traditional Iranian-Islamic format before the Gutenberg era and is considered a manuscript)or a pocket book which could be kept in hand easily. When sitting in front of the book rest and a book in folio formatting is in front of you, your eyes would inevitably go to the lower half of the page, which is closer to your eyes. This subtle point has not gone unnoticed by our traditional book formatting, and the layout of the page elements such as calligraphy, illumination and painting in books that should have been read on book rest, were regulated proportionate to the point of view and location of the reader with regard to the width of the page. This is while, the layout of page elements in Janamazi format was regulated in proportion to the small dimensions and that the entire width of the page was seen in one glance. This same point can be studied in the difference between the layouts of print media and electronic media, of course with more noticeable differences. That is to say, in online media, the pages appear on the screen and are seen with light and therefore the aesthetic requirements are totally different from print media. The importance of layout should be reviewed broadly due to the complicated connection it has with the audience. This paper deals with the same subject.

Interrelation of the world of digital content and economic procedures of today’s socialized world has made it imperative for countries to ponder strategically on the issue of “digital property”. This paper presents the findings of an in-depth study on the course of collecting “digital property” in the country. The world today evaluates its properties in what it has been able to digitalize. Capital in today’s world is the things that have the capacity of becoming digitalized through virtual space and can be put at the disposal of the world in this space. This paper intends to review the country’s macro documents and strategies in the field of digital content production and examine the situation of digital wealth production in Iran. It concludes how the government can only support and supervise instead of interfering in content production.

In the contemporary era, with respect to the expansion of social space that occurred because of dual globalization and dual spacization, huge changes have taken place in various fields of life, one of the most important of which is change in governance systems and social management, and formation of dual spacization of governance. Dual spacization of governance lays emphasis on change from single spacization governance to participatory dual spacization governance, which transfers the duties and services of real-actual space to real-virtual space with respect to the real-actual conditions of mankind’s lives and with the approach to preserve the health endurance of mankind and environment, and increase the economic efficiency and productivity. On the other hand, emergence of mobile technologies as communication tools for “simultaneous and all the time accessibility to all citizens”, brings about the concept of mobile government which is the “government connected to the moving people of the society and stems from an “Ubiquitous communication network”. On this basis, using library method, this paper responds to the questions of what binary capacity the mobile government has created for new governments as a result of dual spacization of contemporary lifeworld; on the basis of which models it works and what opportunities and challenges it brings about for governments. Also, the paper takes into consideration what theoretical approaches exist for the mobile government and what the factors behind success of a mobile government are. Moreover, the indices for readiness of a mobile government are among other issues of discussion in this paper. On the whole, dual spacizataion governance follows qualitative objectives through mobile dual spacization action plans by targeting the core issues of health and life style. As a result of this, “realization of tasks” will be materialized without destruction of environment and air and without damaging human beings’ health and through providing mechanisms for increasing economic efficiency and productivity.

Undoubtedly, the power of the media is not hidden to anyone in today’s society. The news coverage of leading media has shown to considerably affect stock prices; lead to corporate collapses; cause falls in sales of products; result in resignation of senior office-holders – even bring down presidents. Analysis of the media content is a specialized sub-set of content analysis, which is an old and established research methodology. Media content analysis has proliferated as a research methodology in mass communication studies and social sciences with the arrival of television. Media content analysis is applied as a primary research method for studying portrayals of violence, racism and women in television programming as well as in films. A number of researchers have described content analysis as a technique to systematically and objectively conclude and identify the specific characteristics inside a text. The behaviorist and humanistic approaches are two main traditions in content analysis. The behaviorist approach to content analysis is primarily concerned with the effects the content produces. This approach is the one pursued by social scientists. While the behaviorist approach looks forward from media content and tries to identify its future effects, the humanistic approach looks backwards from media content and tries to conduct minute review on the society and the culture producing it. This article deals with content analysis, its importance with respect to the media and various kinds of content analysis.

This paper first reviews the status of computer games as a part of world’s contemporary teenagers’ lives in the cyberspace and then presents evidence on concerns over violence in these games. It then refers to a research conducted at Prague University in 2012 on teenagers of 13 to 14 years of age and explains that the researcher has concluded that some teenagers, interested in violent games, who play violent games for three hours or more per day, have been detached from the world around them, become more expecting and pretentious than others and lost the opportunities their coevals had enjoyed. In continuation, two theories regarding effects of viewing violence (in real world or cyberspace) which the Prague university has paid attention to would be expounded and then part of the quantitative findings of the Czech republic research have been compared with the findings of an experiment conducted using the same method on a similar number of Iranian teenagers. It has been shown in which cases the two experiments had come to completely similar results and in which cases they were different.

Talk shows with their variety, are among prevalent and popular TV genres. While enjoying general principles, they are different in quality and approach to the rules and content in proportion to the media system they belong to. The US media system with a liberalistic foundation and the Iranian media system with a religious (Islamic) groundwork, each have their specific exigencies and implications in their planning with respect to talk show oriented programs. While explaining the philosophy of the talk-show oriented programs and their principles, this paper reviews these two systems and the exigencies of talk-show oriented programs in proportion with them. In the end by analyzing the monotheistic foundations of the Islamic media system, it has briefly enumerated the general necessities of talk show oriented programs in the Islamic Republic television. The result indicates that utilitarianism and entertainment orientation are the basic characteristics of talk show programs in U.S. media system with liberalistic basis. On the opposite side, due to existence of state-run media in Iran and control systems stemmed from Islamic monotheistic principles, supervision and control over content of these programs especially from moral and ideological points of view are carried out more precisely. Reviewing monotheistic principles, it can be said that the idealistic approach of talk shows is realism versus utilitarianism, trade and mere entertainment.

This (research) paper reviews the impacts of presence in the virtual space on modern identity formation of user students at various university levels. The contextual framework of the research comprises modernity components from the viewpoints of Giddens that is time and space, trust, risk, reflexivity, personal relationship and self-identity. The findings of the research show that the experience of presence at virtual space brings about changes in some aspects of the students’ identity and formation of a floating and reflexive identity.

As a determining factor in the international system, today, diplomacy and foreign policy of countries are influenced by the significant developments in the communication field; so that “media diplomacy” has emerged as one of the main branches of the activities of diplomatic machine and foreign policy and has taken a considerable part of the public diplomacy of powerful global countries. From this point of view, a group of researchers and experts argue that media diplomacy mainly takes advantage of the media to promote the foreign policy of countries. In this line, the role and status of domestic media in the field of foreign policy and the P5+1 talks is paid great attention to and attached importance by researchers and media authorities. This is to the extent that this diplomacy is tantamount to force for both sides of the negotiation in the media space and the necessity of using all potentials to gain the maximum interest in diplomatic confrontation. With respect to the importance of Iran’s media diplomacy in talks with P5+1, the Media Studies and Planning Bureau held a meeting in which experts and university professors in the field of the media were present.