نشریه رسانه و فرهنگ
سال هفتم شماره 1 (پیاپی 13، بهار و تابستان 1396)

What role media play in the process of power distribution and political transformation? This is the main question of this paper. We attempt to investigate the relation between the political transformation and media, and doing so, we, through our chosen approach, look at the tenth presidential election in Iran and the role the media have played in the election. The media played a major role in the tenth presidential election. The broadcast of TV debates of candidates from the national media for the first time played a special role in transferring the political discourse into public space which is a unique event in the political history of the country. This research has a qualitative and fundamental nature which has been done by documentary-librarian and analytic-descriptive methods

One of the important factors in attracting audiences to a TV program is the program titles because the first encounter of the audience with a program is its title. There are many factors involved in choosing the appropriate title for programs, which can be identified and classified in terms of linguistics. Dor (2003) considers intertextuality as the most important element of meaning appropriateness, and Ifantidou (2008) regards the salience element as the most important factor in making an appropriate title. By examining the titles of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting Programs (IRIB) during a six-month period, it is evident that Iranian programmers have focused on the salience element and have not paid much attention to the intertextuality of the chosen titles.

Not a mechanical way of picture production, photography is a way for communication. Considering the researches have been done about the functions of photograph in Iran, we rarely face with a qualitative analysis on the history of this sort of media. Therefore, doing such a research, based on the macro structures of the society, is a necessary. The authors attempt to analyze the dominant atmosphere of photography in the present time. In order to reach this goal, we look at photography through the perspective of ‘discourse’ to answer these questions: which discourse, and why and how, has been formed in the present time? And what is the relationship between this discourse and the previous ones? In other words, we are facing with the contrast between the present discourse and its history. For this purpose, the authors take a look at the history of Iranian photography to get a better understanding of its current situation. The methodological framework of this research is based on Michel Foucault’s and Stuart Hall’s thoughts. The authors prove that the current situation of photography in Iran is dominated in a sort of cultural discourse, and this discourse is in a dialectical connection with the political and social discourses of its history. The analysis of power relations, the role of the politics and the procedure of subjectification and objectification are items which the authors concentrate on.

Mobile social networks are a new generation of communication methods in the virtual space. These powerful communication tools can influence the cultural identity of individuals. The present research aims to demonstrate the impact of mobile social network on the cultural identity of Iranian university students and in doing so it evaluates mobile social networks as the independent variable and cultural identity as the dependent variable. From among mobile social networks, Viber and WhatsApp have been chosen because they enjoy higher popularity and number of users in Iran. Their impacts on language, religiosity, clothing style, social behavior and morality which are factors of cultural identity have been measured. Library and field research methods as well as questionnaires were used for data gathering. The statistical population contained graduate students of the Management and Accounting Faculty of Allameh Tabataba‘i University. The statistical population of the research included 450 individuals from which 218 individuals were randomly chosen for the study. Data were analyzed using descriptive and deductive methods. The normality of the variables under study was analyzed using Kolmogorove-Smimov test and it was found that the distribution for all variables was non-normal. Then, the construct validity of all the variables was studied using Confirmatory factor analysis. In the next stage, the hypotheses of the research were put to test using the structural equation model. The results indicated that all the hypotheses are confirmed and mobile social networks do have a positive and meaningful impact on cultural identity.

Advertisement is one of the most important parts in any media around the world. Most of the ideas presented in peoples’ life are conveyed through advertisements. It plays a pivotal role in shaping the dominant discourse. To have an effective advertisement, producers search the ways to capture the audiences' attention. Therefore the beautification of products always is in the center of producers’ attention: they depict a utopian world through the advertisements. Thomas More who challenged the dominant discourse of his time in Utopia, introduces utopia as a place in which no misery, poverty and hate exist. In present time, advertisement tries to unite utopia and ideology. This paper will study the utopian world according to its primary definition and its changes during the time; the way that advertisement implicitly works through hegemony to implement ideology. Then, emphasizing on Iranian television advertisements in early 1390s (2010s), the research follows the issue up in an empirical and objective way. Our research takes advantage of interdisciplinary studies as an integral part of comparative literature. It also uses the new definition of text that includes any cultural product and blurs the boundary between low and high literature. Among the different scopes of advertisement, the focus of this study is on household appliances. The aim is to find the ideology behind this utopian representation and its affinities with the real life of the target audience.

This paper aims to explore the effects of Social Network Sites (SNSs) on ethnical identity in students of Tehran universities. SNSs have played an important role in the political, social, cultural and even economic events in recent years, so studying them and their effects is a necessary. Following such rationale, we assess the effects of these sites on ethnical identity. Reviewing exiting literature shows that ethnical identity includes 4 dimensions: ethnical identification, ethnical culture belonging, ethnical community commitment, and political dimension. Also we used a combination of purpose and snowball sampling methods to gather the research sample, and research is done using online questionnaire. Facebook was chosen as a research field due to its popularity. Results show that there is a relation between SNSs using and ethnical identity. Despite the existence of this relationship we should mention that this correlation is weak.

This study examines the factors associated with the contents of immoral or pornographic contents in Internet groups. The research method is survey and the tool was Internet questionnaire. All the users of internet pornographic groups have been our statistical community. The questionnaires have been sent to users’ emails and 115 users have submitted their answers to the researchers. The findings show that the most members of this group are single men with a mean age of 26 years, which have a bachelor degree and are employed. The weekly average visits are 7.13 times, 80 percent of them are interested in pornographic subjects and 82 percent are satisfied with the porn contents. 60 percent of the users were not monitored by their entourage. The results showed that age, education, satisfaction with the contents, and interest in pornographic subjects were directly and significantly related to the amount of visits to the groups. The average visits to the groups were higher among men, singles and unemployed. Finally, the amount of satisfaction with the pornographic contents, the level of monitoring, and being member in other groups, have a significant relationship with the number of their visits to the groups.

Examining the process of trust in the media, this article seeks to know what factors increase the media credibility for audience and leads to his/her trust in it. In the research, using a qualitative method, we interviewed many communication and media experts. Part of the results of this study shows that news-function is the most important function of media which creates credibility and increases the audience's trust. If the media acts as the true mediator between the facts and the people, it will be trusted by audiences. Also, if the media constructs its message in a community-accepted form, the audience will accept and validate it. In the context of trust in the media, it is also necessary to observe the following components: avoiding one-way interpretations, addressing events from different angles, moving away from exaggeration and contradiction, avoiding ambiguous reflection of issues, avoiding distortion and censorship. The results also indicate that the more audiences are pleased with the media, the more time they spend paying attention to its news over the weekend.

To investigate the effects of the community of inquiry method on critical thinking of students in media literacy (animation), an experiment was designed and conducted in Tehran among 8th-grade students in academic year 2014-2015. The research population was all sixth grade elementary school students in Tehran, among which 48 students were selected by cluster random sampling and were randomly assigned to two experimental and control groups. With 99% confidence, the findings showed that the participation of students in the community of inquiry affects their critical thinking skills. This effect was also significant on the skill of inductive reasoning, deductive reasoning, observational analysis of media messages, the power of trust, and hypothesis construction ability of student. Based on the findings of this study, it can be concluded that educational methods such as ‘community of inquiry’ that promote critical thinking, improve media literacy of students

Both internally and externally, religious propagation through media has always been in the center of attention of Christian denominations. In recent decades, coinciding with the emergence of new media communications such as satellites and internet, Christianity is faced with the new challenges of religious messages advertising. A fundamental change in the form of religion mediatization and a distance from traditional Christian symbols and concepts, in a area which media has provided, has led some Christian sects, such as the Evangelists, to assess their new conditions and predict the opportunities and threats that a new form of religious ceremonies and advertising that were welcomed by their audience. In this study a variety of Christian programs in terms of structure and form of message presentation is evaluated through content analysis of the broadcasts of the most famous Christian preachers on TV and satellite channels