فصلنامه مطالعات فرهنگی و ارتباطات
پیاپی 19 (تابستان 1389)

The present article studies trust and credibility of the domestic and foreign media among residents of Tehran. It also examines the influence that social developments exert on this issue. The article is based on Stuart Hall's theoretical classification and Anderson's theory on source credibility. The authors reach the conclusion that the position of mutuality on domestic media among citizens of Tehran has grown, while public trust in hegemonic position has been significantly reduced. On the other hand, the article discusses thatthe validity of media sources, examined in this study, decreases so does the value of their information. Other findings indicate an increased tendency of the residents towards the satellite channels and lack of interest in the outside radio stations within past 5 years. Such diversion and increased tendency are explained in terms of negative attitudes towards outside radio stations compared to the visual attraction of satellite programs. More than 90 percent of the people studied believe that they follow the news if they find the news correct and real. People whose change of attitude was rated ‘very high’ (68.8%) used satellite products.The authors express their concern on reduction of domestic audience and suggest that in order to strengthen the national unity such reduction should be prevented to reach drastic proportions.

The advertising industry is considered to be a determining institution for social values because of broad and full-fledged influence of business in the daily life of people. It is estimated that more than 400 billion dollars are spent in this industry annually. This indicates the great impact business advertising has on changing the views of people in preferring a set of goods as opposed to the other. Business advertising functions to expand many social and cultural aspects of the society. It also reflects the socio-cultural values underlying relations among all walks of life in the society. Thus, business advertising has a meaningful relationship with the individual and social rights. Governments tend to regulate specific rules and impose certain limits on releasing advertisements in order to maintain the rights of their citizens. These limitations are the sources of considerations which mainly refer to maintaining social discipline and ethics, observing the privacy, supporting rights of minorities, ethnic groups and those considered to belong to nature. They usually differ from one another depending on the type of dominating political system in the society. Reviewing and conducting comparative studies on the rules and regulations of individual counties can be useful in identifying their strengths and weaknesses and in revealing legal gaps within them.

With the advent of modern and more powerful media, the way of managing news and newsrooms has also changed. Consequently, new factors influence the process of the formation of news, its circulation and conversion into a political discourse and social dynamics. This essay attempts to investigate factors, influencing the flow of news in Iran, by analysis of certain news items published by Alef (a small news website in summer 2008) on the issue of Mr. Kordan. Alef’s reports grabbed the media and public attention, made headlines and became the predominant news voice in cyberspace. In this case, no other domestic and semi-official media was able to compete with Alef. The writers have tried to focus on textual and non-textual characteristics of the Alef site as opposed to those of other sites. A significant point here is that the article focuses on main factors which helped the Alef site to succeed in developing a news item and attracting the attention of the audience.

In this research we are going to show the difference between self representation and others representation in some of the contemporary newspaper texts. We show this difference by analyzing two syntactic structures namely modality and transitivity. Teun van Dijk believes that in texts (and especially in political texts) there is always a tendency to represent ourselves and our own group positively and the others and their group negatively; and this is done by highlighting and emphasizing our positive characteristics and activities and their negative characteristics and activities. In data analysis we found that in newspaper texts selection of the modality and transitivity is in line with this strategy; that is the negative representation of the others and positive representation of the self.

The recent article has been authored by use of the results of the survey "editing of the model of information submission in the field of social deviations through Iranian national media"This survey has ventured to analyze the opinions and suggestions of experts of the media by the use of the survey way (Delphi) and interview and questioning tools, and has resulted in submitting a model for national media.Obtained results represent that: between social visioning and the accuracy of the media (the informing way of IRIB) with people’s understanding of government, the level of cooperation of people, refraining crisis, lowering rumors, creation of affective relation and reaching social action in society, lowering social unorganization, and managing of news keeping in IRIB, a meaningful relation exists. This cohesion is direct and poor, also between social visioning and media accuracy (the way of informing of IRIB) and agenda setting of news (time) in IRIB, a meaningful relation exists which is reverse but poor. But between social visioning and media accuracy (the informing way of IRIB) with increase of knowledgeable people as social investment and safety feeling in society, no meaningful relation exists.

The media have been investigated for several times because they set the agenda of the audiences and influence the political leaders. The media and especially the U.S. media such as the prominent and highly circulated Time and Newsweek magazines illustrate images of countries by reflecting different events occurring there. Image making is actually to change people’s outlook on the world. In this study, Time and Newsweek magazines were analyzed for the purposes of understanding the images of Iran during the seventh and ninth Iranian presidential terms. After collecting and analyzing 439 items about Iran, the researchers concluded that the image of Iran in the seventh presidential term is a country that is seeking friendship with other countries and is pursuing changes in its political and social structures. While, in the ninth presidential term, Iran is represented as a country that is seeking the construction of nuclear weapons and wiping Israel out of the map. It is reflected as a country with which confrontation is not possible through war, unless in dialogue and friendship.

Presenting the Foucauldian and Weberian definitions of political legitimacy discourse, the paper studies how media is implemented to spread the political legitimacy of the self discourse. The case study of the paper is a CNN documentary entitled ‘the Revolutionary Journey’ by Christian Amanpour. Theoretically the paper is based on Norman Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis approach which explores some aspects of the formation of discourses. The paper concludes that, at the time of the production of the media text under study, media texts produced by the Reformist and Conservative discourses give way to a discursive reading by other media, and audience that has no direct relationship with the two power discourses present in the Iranian society.

The aim of this article is twofold (1) to clarify the role of media in the sphere of public supervision, specially the supervisory role played by the IRIB (the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting) on government, and (2) to explain the barriers to fulfilling such function by the IRIB. The article discusses the subject in two sections. The method used in the first section is the documentary interview; in the second section the qualitative depth interview method is utilized. Having had interviewed 17 experts and scholars from the fields of ‘communication’ and ‘media management’, the supervisory role of the media is analyzed.The results of the study suggest that the IRIB should have a supervisory role; most experts believed that, in areas such as sports, which are less sensitive, the IRIB has been able to perform rather well. Yet considering its capacity, in the areas of political, social, and cultural affairs, the IRIB can improve its performance further. Those interviewed believed that there are two main obstacles for IRIB to fulfill its supervisory role. Elements Such as human resources, lack of self-concept in the IRIB, organizational culture and the like, constitute what a media entity has control upon. In other words, these are factors within the media vis-à-vis the environmental conditions such as compliance with the red lines, how to communicate with the government institutions, the organizational structure, financing and the like, factors which the IRIB has almost no control upon. These have overshadowed its supervisory function and are classed as barriers for IRIB in fulfilling its supervisory role.