فصلنامه مطالعات فرهنگ - ارتباطات
پیاپی 49 (بهار 1399)

The Research Evaluates new media impacts on Iranian media system. It seems that new media in Iran these days deeply effect on mainstream media and even in some cases makes them to lose their functions. This research tries to evaluate new media impacts on Iranian mainstream media’s internal mechanisms and also relations between them with the people and with the political and economic system. The new media impacts on mainstream media and their relations with system were evaluated by qualitative grounded theory methodology and new media impacts on their relations with the people were evaluated by qualitative survey methodology. Eventually researchers concluded that new media by themselves did not reduce the mainstream media consumption but the tough controls and lack of professionalism in mainstream media were the critical cause of consumption, trustfulness and influence decline so new media rise only has amplified these consequences. In fact, powers and the people have immigrated to new media because of weak mainstream media but they could not entirely alternate with mainstream media. In conclusion, Thesis found a kind of dislocation in Iranian media system in which both mainstream and new media as a kind of public eservice are not in their expected locations.

This research investigates the relations between personality traits, narcissism and Psycho-Social aspects of Facebook (FB) usage in Iran. Social Networking Sites (SNSs) have attracted many users in the last two decades and become an unavoidably element of users’ everyday life. Facebook, as a biggest and the most popular SNS in the world, has many users in Iran too. However, there is not much research about the effects of Iranian users’ personality on their FB usage’s patterns. Hence, this paper tries to answer this question that how users’ personality traits shape their usage and affect the Psycho-Social aspects of that. I use the Big-Five trait taxonomy with NP-16 measure of narcissism as the theoretical framework. The Big-Five Inventory covers extraversion, neuroticism, openness, conscientiousness, and agreeableness dimensions of personality and these traits with narcissism can provide a comprehend illustration of one’s personality. In order to measure the Psycho-Social aspects of FB usage, I have focused on the 5 facets: compensatory use of FB, self-presentation on FB, socializing and seeking sexual partners through FB, FB addiction and FB profile as the virtual self. The methodology of this research was online surveying. I designed and published the questionnaire by GoogleDrive.com and after 3 months, 354 answer sheets were gathered. Findings clarify the relations between each personality dimension with each aspect of psycho-social usage of FB. Moreover, the result provides an important set of information about the ways Iranians use FB.

The present study is a Critical Discourse Analysis on twenty four episodes of a BBC Persian T.V programme entitled “Pargar”. The main purpose of this study is to represent how the dominant hegemonic discourse in this special program i.e. secularism discourse wittingly manipulates audience minds so that they acknowledge religion’s survival and existence only in the forms of neo-emerging theosophies (Erfans) or individual spiritualties. Indeed, religion is imagined as a missing one in public domain. Articulating discourse of religion in dichotomies such as modern expert/Marja sonati, Erfan/ Fiqh, Religion Essence /Religion rituals, individualism /Marjaism tends to deessentialize all essences presupposed among the traditional believers. Indeed, religious reformation and dereligionism are two strategic approaches which secularism applies to deessentialize religion. As a result of this deessentialism, religion has been transformed into something so-called shallow and neutral so that it cannot be easily recognized as a concrete phenomenon in social life.

The family is a sacred phenomenon and one of the most important pillars of the community in the Islamic view. Therefore, after the Islamic Revolution, the Islamic system ruling in Iran, reproduces the discourse of familialism in the cultural and social relations of the country. But in the modern world, given the prevailing discourse of individualism and humanity, the rights and interests of individuals have been given priority to the interests of the family and in Iran, this discourse as the rival of family-oriented discourse is gradually emerging and expanding in the life of the Iranian society. The media, the press, , ... as the cultural elements of the world's ecosystem of the Iranian society, are the battleground of these two discourses. The present research seeks to analyze the family discourses in Iran and evaluate them in popular magazines. The research method was discourse analysis. For research purposes, the method of Fairclough and Laclau & Mouffe was used in combination. The findings of this research indicate that the discourse of family-centeredness is rooted in the dialectic orientation and with the central sign of compromise, and the individualist discourse revolves around the individuality axis and with the central sign of rights. The review of the content of the yellow publications also suggests that the approach of Iranian family journals, the green family, successes, and the days of life is more closely related to family-oriented discourse, and the concepts and signs of this discourse are more represented in these journals.

This study evaluates the conditions of prioritizing social media as a mean for spending leisure time, the way people use social media, and its negative and positive impacts from the viewpoint of users. It was carried out via grounded theory approach and qualitative interviews with 10 active users. According to the results of data analysis, four factors were pinpointed as the main underlies of using social media as a mean for spending leisure time, including communication needs, leisure needs, technological needs, and the need for various experiences. Three main positive impacts of social media are growth of communication abilities, psychological effects, and improvement of individual interests. On the other hand, it has negative impacts on family and social relations, physical and mental health and individual effects. Technological-technical effects and mental-psychological are activity continuity factors. The result of this research confirmed a process of replacing the virtual leisure with real leisure and Combining the concepts of work and leisure for users.

The main questions of this research are that what elements of this compound are in the young population of Iranian society? How has each of these elements evolved over the past decades, and what has been the ups and downs? What is the relationship between the components of the collective identity of Iranian youth? What kind of combination is this composition and how is it arranged, commented, traded, and how is the interaction between these elements? Research method of this study was  longitudinal and national study based on the secondary analysis of quantitative data of variables studied in the period of 1973-94. The results show that the religious identity with an average of 11/83 was on the scale of 100 most prevalent types of identity over the years in the Iranian youth community. After that, the national identity with the mean of 29/80 is the most widely spread among the youth. Ethnic identity with 53/46 and also modern identity with 03/52 are the next. In terms of correlation tests and according to the correlation chart, it can generally be concluded that there is a relationship between national identity and ethnic identity among young people in the year 86. Correlation coefficient of these two direct and significant variables is moderate. Also, the results of the Spearman correlation test between the national identity and religious identity among the youth in the years 79, 86, 84, 88 indicate the existence of a relationship between the two identities.

Considering the salient role of vocabularies in reflecting the cultural beliefs of a given society, the present study aims at examining the discursive functions of “death” and the related terms in the Persian language corpus, using Hymes's (1967) SPEAKING model. The reason we have chosen such concept is that not only can it vividly illustrate the existing cultural beliefs of a society, but also it can be examined from social and linguistic points of view. To this end, 673 contexts in which the death-related discourses have been used were recorded, and after analyzing the data based on the SPEAKING model, the social aspects of the discursive functions were extracted. The results revealed that the intention behind using death and its related terms among Persian speakers of Iran is rooted in the prevalence of morbid thoughts, death-seeking, necrolatry, love of sadness, and cherophobia.

The purpose of this study is to look at Iranian Comedy during the 1983-2013 from an aesthetic point of view. Using the analytical tools of the genre theory and considering the variables such as the generic crossroads (the counter culture vs. cultural values), and the hybridization status, analyzes the best-selling statistical samples of comedy in Iranian cinema. Data are collected through documentary, library and observational study and by a descriptive-analytical approach, the relationship the generic crossroads and the hybridization status in each sample is examined. On the one hand, the statistical samples examined indicate the ability to hybridize the comedy genre with various genres and endorse the process of comedy genre. On the other hand, the hybridized genres provide a platform for genre counter culture dimension. The more tension the counter culture and cultural values is, the greater the impact of the genre will be palpable.

Metafilms are kind  of films which their subject matters are the nature of cinema and film-making. Film-makers of this Sub-Genre have a critical view to the production of meaning and highlight the fictional and artificiality of the film. They confront the current illusion in the conventional and realistic films. Conflict between characters in cinematic works, as a principle, reflects the importance of study, regarding "self" and "the other" in these works. The relationship between "self" and "the other" has been characterized as the "subject" and the "object" in most part of the philosophy's history. In Sartre's viewpoint, human turns into an "object" in the "gaze" of "the other" and loses his freedom. Unlike him, Levinas thinks that assuming "the other" as an "object" is applying violence against "the other. By analyzing characters' relationship in Kiarostami's works, we can answer the question that how is the relationship between "self "and "the other" in his films and metafilms? In considering the films of “Where is the friend’s home”, “Taste of Cherry" and meta-films of "Close-up","The wind will carry us" and “Through the olive trees", descriptive-analytic with Critical discourse analysis of Fairclough were used. By doing so, we can represent structural differences of metafilms in “the other" reflectivity in the works of this director. The result of the study suggests that despite the same director, and the same social, political and cultural background of these works, due to the characteristics of self-reflectivity and self-criticism in kiarostami's metafilms, unlike his films, the relationship between "self" and "the other" is based on Levinas and the other-oriented. This is a sign of the reorganization of the discursive order of society in the relationship between "self" and the other.

The purpose of this study was to identify the relationship between individualism and relative deprivation with indifference with special emphasis on youth in Kermanshah. The survey method and data gathering tool were a researcher-made questionnaire. The population of this study is young people aged 20-30 years old in Kermanshah. 400 of them were studied by cluster randomized cluster random sampling method. The collected data were analyzed using SPSS and AMOS softwars. Regression results show that two relative deprivation variables (Beta = 0.12) and individuality (Beta = 0.20) were introduced. The value of T for individuality is (T = 3/76) and for the relative deprivation rate (T = 2.38). Together, these two variables could explain the amount of 0.24 of the internal variation of the degree of apathy. The results of the structural equation model (AMOS) show that the value of P-value for the four variables (relative deprivation with the value of 0.949, individuality with the value of 0.260, the degree of education with the value of 0.210 and the variable duration of residence with the amount of standard regression coefficient is equal to 0.255 at the error level less than 0.05; which shows that the effect of these variables on the dependent variable is significant. The results are based on the model fit of the model for RMR of 0.233, the RMSEA index is 0.046, the CMIN / DF index is 2.012 and the CFI and PCFI indices with the values of 0.943 and 0.767 in acceptable model are approved.