فصلنامه مطالعات فرهنگی و ارتباطات
پیاپی 17 (زمستان 1388)

With development of internet access and increasingly use of its contents and websites by young people, cultural identity has become one of the main anxieties concerning to social cohesion and national integration. Hence, in this paper, we survey the relationship between rate/state of internet usage and youth cultural identity. The main question is how the arate/state of internet usage influences on youths cultural identity? Internet as one of means of globalization, whether undermine the identity of indigenous culture? Cultural identity was studied based on two dimensions: religious identity and national identity. Research findings have been derived from a sample of 384 young people from Tehran in a survey and by using questionnaire technique; Our data analysis shows that: firstly, in terms of cultural identity there is differences between users and non-users of internet; secondly, there is a relationship between the rate/state of internet usage and cultural identity of internet users; that is, the more time allocated to use of non-native websites and contents, the cultural identity will be weakened.

In this article, we study Iranian dating online systems and focus on characteristics of the users of these systems in World Wide Web and try to provide a typology of Persian dating online systems. In this paper, first will be provided a definition of this type of dating, and will be categorized these systems by using observation method in cyberspace. Then, function, components of systems, and their user’s characteristics will be studied. Along with observation, interview with websites’ managers and some users and questionnaire also, have been used. The results suggest that dating systems are visible in two categories: weblogs and websites; dating websites, providing better services, attract more users than weblogs. Most users are from the middle to upper class, have high education, are in the marriage age and live in large cities. Furthermore, the results indicate, dating process in internet is similar to the real world, and usually men start the relationship. The only major difference is possible abuse of user information, because of anonymity in cyberspace.

For years, the world has faced the increasing spread of English language, especially on the Internet. It is still unbelievable that one day, the dominance of English language declines or vanishes. But the evidences show that at least on cyberspace, other languages are spreading and growing as well, so that the amounts of non- English websites incredibly are increasing. Recently, it seems that the People related to the cyberspace, mostly tend to use their own local and ethnical language on internet as a medium of communication. Persian language, through widely use by its members, among the languages in the internet also proved to be a serious challenger. Growing of internet pages with Persian contents, indicate presence of this language in the cyberspace. Undoubtedly it is an opportunity for policymakers of Persian language to manage the maintaining and spreading of Persian language, and consequently planning to maintain and promotion of Iranian culture and identity. The emphasize of this article is on the fact that at this time, internet can be an appropriate space for flourishing, spreading and maintaining Persian language as the significant factor of Iranian national identity. Hence it requires a deliberate and integrated policy by governmental sector to facilitate and lead this process. Therefore the government can effectively highlight the presence of Persian language in the cyberspace, so that, it can take advantage of internet for improving the national objectives. The perquisite of such a policy is to finish the incomplete programs relevant to cyberspace, as soon as possible, so that some existing limitations such as low speed of internet in Iran, dependence on foreign services, and problems related to Persian spelling on the web, can be disappeared. Moreover this article proposes that, regarding the speed of growth and influential role of internet - so that the state of Persian language on internet is among the linguistic preferences of our society - language policy in the internet must be one of the tasks of policy making organizations, such as Language Academy (Farhangestan-e-Zaban), so that language experts share in this policy making.

Sense of community is a subjective experience and expresses a feeling of individual´s belonging to the community. This concept place against feeling of loneliness and social isolation, while is conceptually common to social cohesion and social capital. Although there is no full agreement on its definition, it is considered as a useful conceptual instrument, through which vitality and happiness of communities can be evaluated. Sense of community at the beginning of its development was mainly restricted to the territorial communities, but gradually progressed into relational ones. Recently, researchers have given their attention to sense of community due to the growth of virtual communities. The purpose of this article is to study sense of community as well as introducing new construction of sense of virtual community. For this aim, firstly, conceptual transformation of community and its various forms are considered and then, sense of community is described. Accordingly, its various dimensions and importance in social researches are identified. Furthermore, while mention of some researches in which sense of virtual community is studied, we try to answersome questions such as: “whether members of virtual communities experience a sense of community or not?”, «What factors influence the development of sense of virtual community?» and finally, «How and under what conditions, virtual communities affect on place-based communities?»

Citizenship belongs to the information millennium and the cyberspace. From this approach, the present era should be considered as the age and context of the cyber-citizenship making, which has directed us towards identifications, identitybuildings, and cyber anti-identities; but these are inconsistent with the nature of human based and pre-cyber citizenship. Thus the paper examines whether cyber-citizenship is superior to the pre-cyber citizenship or not? If, blessed by the presence of computer and internet, we are really more citizen and more human than our pre-cyber ancestors? If we should not be worry about the progress of cyber-citizenship, simultaneously with the degeneration of the pre-cyber human based citizenship? The mentioned issues have guided us towards discussions on the nature of cyber and pre-cyber citizenships, their social formation, the social consequences of cybercitizenship, social cohesion, identity crisis; ethical anomy; cultural degeneration; cyber self-foundation, non-real citizenship, and the social possibilities and probabilities (Threats and Opportunities) of the cyber-citizenship. Moreover an empirical image has been reflected of cyber-citizenship in the Iranian cyberspace.

In this article, we try to examine theories and viewpoints about the formation and development of information society and history of the emergence of this term, and we assess also the present status of Iran on the way toward information society. After theoretical studies, The Q methodology was used by researchers to assess the viewpoints of technical experts and theorists of information society on developing information society in Iran. In this study, a questionnaire included 73 Q-sorts, was made in the context of optimistic theories, critical theories, and neutral or intermediate theories. These Q-sorts were classified in three general categories, as indicators of issues, including the common principles of information society, accessibility or special needs to information society and the applications of information society. Based on this study, among 73 Q-sorts of Research, the two groups of respondents (20 technical experts, 20 communication theorists), have reached to an agreement on 55 Q-sorts, and on 18 other Q-sorts have disagreed. The viewpoint of experts and theorists of information society is that in current situation of Iran, considering the socio-cultural infrastructures is the most important principle to achieve the information society, which requires properly and accurate planning. They emphasize on the undeniable role of government in establishment of the information society, but they do not agree with the governmental implemented or ongoing plans.

According to characteristics of virtual space of internet and its impact on the view and reading of religion and religiosity between weblog users at this modern era, this article has attempted to classify various readings of religiosity at the Persian language weblogs. In this research, while review of produced literatures in sociology of religion and hegemonic readings about current typology of religiosity, we have studied virtual spaces, such as internet and weblogs, and their relationship with people’s everyday life and religiosity. After exploring dominant typologies of religiousness on the sociological literature, we achieved a different religiosity typology at Persian weblogs. We used the methodology of “Grounded Theory” which is specifically applied for classification and categorization. The sampling framework is all Persianlanguage weblogs, which have some contents relevant to religion or religiosity or can be so interpreted. The sampling unit is post of weblogs. Analyzing religious notes, which posted on weblogs, finally lead us to a triple typology of religiosity: romantic religion, political religion, and social reading. Romantic reading of religion has devoted to itself much more amount of weblogs’ contents than two other types. This integration between religion and romantic elements of everyday life can be seen due to recent modern conditions.

The internet chatrooms are far appealing to Iranian youth. Studies show that in the future these rooms will even catch more with Iranian young people. Hence, this study aims to present an outlook for how internet users will use these chatrooms. To this end, over a hundred academic articles were collected and reviewed. The results show that, chatrooms offer both, a threat and an opportunity for communities. Given the fact, modern communication technologies are considered as an imposed rather than a chosen option for communities, this article suggests that it is essential to culturally optimize chatrooms, in order to restrain its negative consequences.

Perspectives of computer game players (gamers) about games and themselves, and about others attitudes towards games and gamers are the subject of this article. This article is retrieved from a qualitative research with phenomenological approach, in which a group of heavy players (no=18) were interviewed in Tehran (Iran). The interviewees were selected from a group of available young men between 18 and 28 years in Game-Nets of Tehran or in the place of second tournament of computer games in Iran. The comparison of the attitudes of gamers towards computer games and themselves and their perspectives toward other’s attitudes about games and gamers suggests a disagreement between them. In spite of the positive attitudes of interviewees towards themselves and computer games, so that they would be proud to own - they believed that the majority of Iranian society has a negative attitude towards them and computer games. The analysis suggest that media panic has a great role in public reaction to computer games.

Daily Increasing of data development and their diffusion speed is the main distinctive characteristic of the present era. Necessity of understanding the Internet penetration, as the main means of data transfer all over the world, is one of the most basic tasks to culture building, policy making and controlling the use of internet, and utilizing it, to introducing history and culture, and exchange of knowledge, science and technology. Accordingly, in this research, demographic and functional characteristics of the internet users in Mazandaran province have been analyzed. The required data in this research has been gathered using about 5000 questionnaires. Age, gender, education, income, job status, availability of personal computer, internet using experience, how-to-use internet, location of internet using, level of satisfaction of internet services, opinion about filtering, and hours per week using of internet, have been the most important information, extracted from the questionnaires. Using the obtained information, a comprehensive demographic map of internet penetration rate, has been edited and illustrated in 2007, for Mazandaran province. The internet penetration rates have been derived from different groups and subgroups. The rate of internet penetration in Mazandaran has been found to be about 30 percent in 2007.