مجله جهانی رسانه - نسخه فارسی
پیاپی 19 (بهار و تابستان 1394)

The objective of this paper is to offer an interpretation of the pictures on the cover page of chelcheragh magazine that is known as a popular magazine. This interpretation aims at decoding ideological codes of the pictures and discovers how magazine uses these codes to naturalize some myths. We offer Roland Barthes’s approach to decoding images as framework for a semiotic analysis of the cover page pictures of chelcheragh magazine. It should be noted that popular magazines represent the external reality according to their ideological stance. The present paper aims at investigating some samples from the cover pages of the Chelcheragh magazine in order to reveal the magazines concealed ideology. Methodologically, some six cover page images from among 144 images were selected based on the critical case-sampling model. When the validity of the sampling method was guaranteed, then we analyzed the samples in according to the above-mentioned semiotic methodology. Some of the results show that Chelcheragh magazine uses a critical ideology toward the dominant cultural order. The myths used by the magazine include myth of hero, myth of destruction, myth of transcendent femininity, myth of being popular, myth of motherhood, and myth of black exponential. Theses myths provide the ideological interests of the magazine and contribute to naturalizing worldviews and interests of the magazine. Such ideology criticizes the government’s policy on leisure time of the youth, National Broadcasting Corporation, air pollution; the government is shutting down of the house of cinema, and the ban on the women’s travel to foreign countries by themselves. At the same time, the images support the critical TV program called “90” which critically reviews Iran’s soccer league games. The images also, support the movements that are divergent in relation to the dominant cultural system.

This paper offers an argument on the incompatibility of restrictions on the principles of freedom of press in Iranian legal system vis international human rights legal system. Due to such incompatibility, Iran faces many challenges by the international institutions. Accordingly, the objective of this paper is to provide an understanding about the reasons and origins of this dilemma and tries to offer possible theoretical solutions. The paper tackles the issue from the standpoint of the restrictions on the freedom of press embedded in Constitution of Islamic Republic of Iran. It will first evaluate the conformity of the regulations of the Iranian Press Law with that of the Constitution. It will then, study the current principles, as formal and figural restrictions, and how these restrictions are being imposed and followed by the press. In addition, it describes the limitations pronounced in international and regional documents of human rights, as natural and intrinsic limitations, and shows the necessity of trying to make Iranian press law to be compatible with such international human rights legal system. Some of the findings indicate that the Iranian legal system has not been following the principles of the press restrictions totally. In addition, the compatibility of the intrinsic restrictions requires Iranian legal system to interpret them in accordance with documents of human rights.

This paper investigates the reasons behind users’ preferring one social network over the others. It will also examine what decision making methods the Iranian users employ to choose their favorite social network. It should be noted that sixdegrees.com was the first social network that was released in 1997 which was followed by many other social networks. Some researchers have defined social networks as web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of their users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system. The nature and nomenclature of these connections may vary from network to network. According to reports, Facebook is one of the most popular ones. Facebook is ranked 1st in most viewed social networks throughout the world. Google company released a new project, named Google plus in 2011. Google plus reaches to 10 million users in 16 days, while Facebook reaches to 10 million users in 852 days. The competition between Facebook and Google Plus helps us to find out why users prefer one network over the others. At the first glance it seems users’ preferences are related to their needs, that is the reason we think the use and gratification theory provides a suitable theoretical framework for this paper. Methodologically it seems appropriate to use focus group for data collection. Use and gratification (U&G) is a psychological communication perspective that examines how individuals use mass media, on the assumption that individuals select media and content to meet their needs or wants. Contemporary U&G research is grounded in the following five assumptions: (a) "communication behavior, including media selection and use, is goal-directed, purposive, and motivated"; (b) "people take the initiative in selecting and using communication vehicles to satisfy felt needs or desires"; (c) "a host of social and psychological factors mediate people's communication behavior"; (d) "media compete with other forms of communication i.e., functional alternatives) for selection, attention, and use to gratify our needs or wants"; and (e) "people are typically more influential than the media in the relationship, but not always". We use this theory combined with the model of audience decision making in selecting new media that was presented by Becker and Schoenbach. This model deals whit how audience choose a new media and which needs affect their decision making. We used qualitative interviews and chose our sample based on case-oriented sampling and did it to reach the theoretical saturation. Theoretical saturation occurs in data collection when: (a) no new or relevant data seem to emerge regarding a category, (b) the category is well developed in terms of its properties and dimensions demonstrating variation, and (c) the relationships among categories are well established and validated. In other words, the researcher continues expanding the sample size until data collection (e.g. interviews) supplies no new data. Doing that, we interviewed 10 Facebook heavy users (4 men, 6 women), who were completely accustomed to Facebook usage and additionally joined Google Plus in early days of its launch. Some of the findings indicate that two most important reasons that speed up the process of joining social networks are as follows: a) users’ curiosity and b) previous experience. Most of the interviewees accepted that their curiosity encouraged them to join a social network, they told us when a new network begins its activity and joining it has no cost, they prefer to join and experience the network. These findings match the model of audience decision making in selecting new media. Furthermore, previous experience is another important factor. Previous experience effects are one of the most important reasons for joining a network, and robust, of all media audience behaviors and most researchers recognize it as a determining factor in audience flow. The results also verified that this phenomenon is important in social network users’ behavior. Most of the samples mentioned that they joined Facebook after Yahoo 360 was shut down. In seeking a new network they joined Facebook, mostly because of their friends’ requests.Furthermore, the results show that if user’s friends emigrate to a new network, the user possibly follow them. In fact, users’ friends’ presence is a crucial reason in choosing a new network. As another result, this research shows most of the users register in many networks but it doesn’t mean they remain active in all of them. For instance, interviewees argued that despite creating an account in Google Plus, they rarely use it. The samples pointed out it had happened because their friends continued using Facebook and did not decamp to Google Plus.

The objective of this paper is to indicate how the meaning, ethics, and family crisis as consequences of the late modernity and the capitalism world are represented in four films of González Iñárritu, i.e. ‘Amores Perros’, ‘21 Grams’, ‘Babel’, and ‘Biutiful’. In order to do so we have used a synthetic theoretical model taken from Simmel’s theory of ‘money in modern culture’ and Giddens’s theory of ‘society and self-identity in the late modernity’. Methodologically, we used content analysis method (CAM) to address what our theoretical model claims about González Iñárritu’s movies representing crisis of meaning and family crisis. Some of the research findings include: 1) Characters of the films depict modern men who are trying to survive, while suffering from lack of protective shield of family. Some features of such individuals include: they raise ontological questions, they seek spiritual and moral asylum, and they are in search of pure relationship, 2) Money is one of the alternatives which puts the individual in a network of actors, 3) Some thematic aspects plus narrative and technical structure of the movie “neo-noir “are discoverable, 4) Iñárritu tried to deconstruct ideas of bourgeois modernity and, in return, searches for aesthetic modernity.

The main objective of this paper is to offer the results of a study on animations and how global identity-making is affecting Iranian girls in virtual world. In other words, the research aims to study the role of animation in making the international identity of Iranian female teens and show how it is displayed in blogs. It seems a considerable number of children and teenagers in Iran spend more than 2 to 3 hours of their daily time watching animations. Many of these animations seem to be so attractive and powerful that they have become some source of identity-making for their viewers. These animations contain messages that depict major cultural elements of the countries in which they have been produced. We used theoretical views of Manuel Castells, Giddens, and Stuart Hall, especially where they offer shared views on identity. We also used George Ritzer’s views on globalization of culture. Theoretically speaking, the new developments of the media industry especially internet and the changes that it has brought about, it has opened up new windows of opportunities for everyone including teens while opening grounds on which identity-making is being challenged. Methodologically, the paper uses content analysis to test its theoretical claims. To do content analysis, some 20 blogs that belonged to the Iranian teen girls who age ranged between 10 an 15 were randomly selected and studied. Some of the research results indicate that the global identity of teenage girls is made by an impact inflicted from becoming the audience of the animations. The effects of such impact can be observed in their blogs because virtual world provides them with the opportunities through which they can introduce themselves as members of the global community. Furthermore, they practice elements of the global culture. The research findings also indicate that animations create homogeneous cultural similarity among their audience including teenage girls.

This research paper attempts to discover how BBC Persian news channel did its framing style during the 50-days war between Gaza and Israel. The objective of this analysis is to examine whether objective journalism exists in BBC Persian channel. This argument is especially important to take on due to the long-standing contention that exists in the critical region of the Middle East. The 50-days war in Gaza that happened in 2014 is one of the noticeable wars in recent years, one that required professional an objective journalism to have got involved, or did it. This question needs to be addressed here. I order to do so, a content analysis was employed that we considered would enable us to describe BBC channel's messages objectively. The research unit of analysis includes the most important daily news program of BBC Persian channel that was launched from July 3 until August 27 of 2014 during which the 50-day war occurred. Rather than sampling, we used complete enumeration of the material broadcasted during above period so to increase the credibility of the results. Some of the findings indicate that BBC Persian channel justified Israel's invasions of Gaza while depicting Hamas's attacks not in the same fashion. This line of journalism occurred while the channel supported the idea of negotiation under any condition and refused the resistance activities. During this process, the channel also tried to preserve its audience’s trust. While pretending to be pro-peace talks, BBC tried to infuse the idea that there is a gap between Hamas and Gaza people. It also tried to depict a powerful image from Israeli army. The paper concludes that it is understandable to consider BBC Persian as broadcasting corporation that does not reflect the criteria of an objective journalism and rather has a noticeable bias and fails to follow the principles of objective journalism in its narrative style.

The main objective of this paper is to determine how familiar the Library and Information Science graduate students at Ferdowsi University of Mashhad (FUM) and Payame Noor University of Mashhad (PNUM) are with capabilities of Web 2.0. We will also indicate the results of our study on the attitudes of the student on the use of web 2.0 capabilities. In order to do so we chose all Library and Information Science graduate students at FUM and PNUM to construct the unit of our analysis. Then a sample extracted from our unit of analysis which reached to 140 graduate students from FUM and PNUM. Then we used the researcher-made questionnaire to collect the necessary data. The questionnaire was then distributed among the sample members, based on the stratified random sampling and eventually some 76 valid questionnaires were collected to be suitable for further analysis. Some of the research findings indicate that the most popular Web 2.0 tools used by the research samples from FUM and PNUM turn out to be Weblog and the least popular one was social cataloging sites. Also, the most used Web 2.0 tools among FUN students were Wiki while PNUM students used Weblogs. It should also be noted that there was a significant relationship between the type of university the graduate students studied in and their familiarity with Web 2.0 tools. This is while no significant relationship existed between the type of university and the use of Web 2.0 tools. The findings also indicated that two research populations had considered the impact of Web 2.0 tools on knowledge sharing to be a moderate impact. They instead considered the impact of Weblogs on knowledge sharing to have been above average.

This paper is the result of a descriptive-explanatory and causal-comparative study on the rate of satellite TV use and the Sanandaji users’ preference of one channel to the others. The paper seeks to explain whether there is a causal relationship between satellite use and level of religiosity among 18 to 29 year old youth population in the great Sanandaj area. Theoretically we addressed the problematic of interaction between Satellite use and religiosity with a synthesis between cultivation theory and Peter Berger’s secularization theory. Methodologically, we used a field survey in 2012 and 2013 and worked with 583 samples taken from the city of Sanandaj and some nearby villages. Some of the findings indicate that variables such as socio-economic status, gender, and age have no significant relationship with rate of satellite use. Variables such as marital status, level of education, and occupation have significant relationship with rate of satellite use. In addition, we tested the hypothesis “the rate of satellite use has correlation with the rate of religious beliefs and practices”. The hypothesis tuned out to be true among the urban residents whereas what can be said about the rural residents is that satellite use has some minor effects on two dimensions of religious practices, i.e., the belief dimension and the consequential dimension and has contributed to their decrease. It should also be noted that the purpose of the satellite TV use (cultural use, political, entertainment, information) did not have any significant effect on the rate of religiosity. The result of the T test indicated that there was not any significant relationship between rural and urban residents in terms of the rate of satellite use. Nevertheless, using cultivation approach we can claim that a combination of satellite use and other factors affected urban youth than rural youth in all four dimensions of religiosity (belief, emotional, consequential, and ritual).