The International Journal of Humanities
Volume:15 Issue: 1, 2007

How does a journalist or an editor decide which news is worthy and which is not? According to some media researchers, they refer to a set of news values. One of the best known lists of such news values have been supplied by Johan Galtung and Marie H. Ruge. An analytical discussion on news values always refers to this list, which initially intended to cover international events. These factors include: 1- Frequency 2- Threshold 3- Unambiguity 4- Meaningfulness 5- Consonance 6- Unexpectedness 7- Continuity 8- Composition 9- Reference to elite nations 10- Reference to elite people 11-Reference to persons 12- Negativity. The current research collected 303 headlines from the front pages of four widely circulated Iranian newspapers: Hamshahri, Keyhan, Shargh and Iran. Out of these headlines, 426 news were distinguished and considered. As such, results show that the factors like reference to elite people (F10) and consonance (F5) play main role in Iranian press. Further Iranian press do not focus on Galtung and Ruge’s news values although, in general, headlines possess one or more of above factors. However, two factors (F10 and F5) show that Iranian press follow traditional process in news selection.

In 1985-86, the European office of World Health Organization (WHO) proposed the health promotion program under the theme “Healthy Cities Projects”. With the aim of securing individual and collective welfare, the staffs of healthy city in Tehran also began their official activities at 13th Aban Street at Rey (Tehran’s 20th municipal district) along with community participation and intersectoral coordination. Since, the “Healthy Cities Projects”, emphasised on intersectoral coordination, self-awareness and community participation; the issue of the current research is whether or not there is any specific difference of opinion among people and officials regarding this project? For this purpose, people’s viewpoints on the activities was conducted through 424 samples from 13th Aban Street coincidentally with 46 officials of the “Healthy Cities Projects” and thus analytical study was carried out keeping in view level of differences between people and officials of “Healthy Cities Projects” and their viewpoints regarding community participation in the physical and mental health, individual security, environment and utmost to sports and training. The results indicate that with reference to the satisfaction level on “Healthy Cities Projects”, there isnt a significant difference between people's and officials viewpointsBut, with respect to their viewpoints about the level of community participation, there exists significant differences between people's and officials viewpoints in the fields of “Healthy Cities Projects” physical and mental health, individual and social safety, environment and utmost sportive and educational activities. The obtained results from officials, therefore, are more than those obtained from people.

Political legitimacy is one of the fundamental notions in contemporary political theorizing. To explain this notion, a set of views, influenced by Weber, put emphasis on the role of political beliefs of the citizens. Yet, recent academic enterprises refer to the political agents, focusing on their actions. This article studies Iranians’ socio-economic conditions in 1990’s, and reveals the setting of the emergence of the reformism, with regard to the notion of legitimacy. Along this line, the strategy of the reformists as the political agents is examined and their weaknesses and strengths as well as the reason of their failure are discussed.

In recent decades, the theory of Sustainable Development has been introduced to several strands of science. This theory and its special view to communities (Sustainable Community Development) as the cell of urban life, demonstrates the solution to urban problems by highlighting the meaning of city neighborhoods. In the local scale, it is essential to use a collaborative process of development, which is based on the active participation of local people as social capital. In this way, the perception of local residents of a collaborative process is what makes this process successful or otherwise. This article identifies the perception of local residents towards the collaborative process and its positive and negative aspects. This is done using the “Deep Interview” and “Focus Group Discussion” techniques, deployed within the Jolfa Mahalla community, as a sample urban neighborhood in Tehran, with a rich historical background and strong social networks. This paper aims to argue that the lack of participatory culture between people and local residents can lead to the breakdown of relationship and communication between them, but more importantly, the absence of local urban spaces in neighborhoods further augments this problem. Thus, making suitable local spaces encourages people to participate in local development projects.

This study tries to show that how viewpoint functions in discourse. As it will be clarified, it is highly related to the intention of the speaker/writer, and as a result, the orientation (s)he adopts in the discourse. Deictic markers function as discourse markers to fix and anchor time, place, agent, and other discursive elements. In this way, the viewpoint adopted by the enunciator/utterer is determined. Different types of viewpoint, then, are introduced and exemplified. Its relation with perspective is also examined.

Throughout the years, philosophers and psychologists have striven to solve the mind-boggling question of learning by juxtaposing the two competing theories, namely, empiricism and rationalism. They have usually opted for one and ruled out the other on the grounds that it cannot account for learning because theoretical and empirical evidence discredits it. Since 1965, with the publication of Chomsky's Aspects of the Theory of Syntax in which, he explicitly introduces the notion of Universal Grammar and implicitly employs the term to support Fodor's philosophical view of learning in terms of 'language of thought', the rationalistic arguments seem to have taken over this never-ending and perpetual battle. Here in this article, it is argued that despite its popularity among a good number of scholars, the rationalistic account of learning suffers from serious flaws. A conglomerate of empirical and theoretical evidence challenges the notion of 'language of thought'. Self-interpretive power of the language of thought, inaccessibility of cognitive theories to truth conditional meaning, meaningful experiences, inability to test memory, problems with modularity and regulation are simply some of the arguments that might be raised against the idea of 'language of thought'. Finally, a framework for the acquisition of language is presented.

The current research tries to offer a conceptual model in order to create trust among people for choosing virtual universities. To this end, the conceptual model of research has been designed with nine factors. The relationship among factors tested by using statistical methods such as factor analysis and path analysis. In the end, five components were established from among the affecting factors of student trust towards these virtual universities. They are: academic reputation, administrative efficacy, size, economical factor of studying and the suitable environmental conditions for virtual universities activity. However, it was established that the role of each of these components in creating trust towards virtual universities were different from those predicted by the researchers. Also, it was established that student's willingness toward choosing virtual universities is being influenced by the trust factor.

The non-linear order of revelations is often considered by many scholars to signify lack of coherence, disunity, and fragmentariness. It seems that 'coherence' and the related terms have veiled a significant linguistic feature of the Qur’an, namely, the non-linear nature of revelations, which might be used to make a distinction between ordinary and Quranic discourse. We will argue that to unveil the non-linearity, we should consider revelations in relation to God who reveals Himself in language not as an ordinary speaker whose speech is limited to a certain context, with a beginning and an end. We should not expect God to speak like a man. The Qur’an, thus, is seen here as a non-temporal, non-linear text that reflects its divine origin, by systematically destructing the spacio-temporal context and the linear order of language.