مجله جهانی رسانه - نسخه فارسی
پیاپی 13 (بهار و تابستان 1391)

This study attempts to assess the visual function of Iranian newspapers concerning three major incidents in the Middle East in recent years: deaths of Saddam Hussein, Benazir Bhutto and Osama bin Laden. This study seeks to answer the following questions: are images of friends and foes similarly represented in photos of political news in newspapers? How do newspapers manage to demonstrate their political standpoint towards different individuals through photographs? And does the political stance of a newspaper affect its position towards different individuals? To answer these questions, this research uses photographs of deaths of Saddam Hussein, Benazir Bhutto and Osama Bin Laden published in the following 15 Iranian national newspapers: Kayhan, Ettelaat, Hamshahri, Jam-e-Jam, Iran, Jomhouri Eslami, Resalat, Abrar, Siasat Rooz, Farhang Ashti, Etemaad, Shargh, Aftab Yazd, Hambastegi and Mardomsalari. The assessment is done by implementing semiotics techniques drawn from Roland Barthes’s notions on image semiotics, as well as Media Representation Theory by Stuart Hall and Denis McQuail’s notions on bias in addition to semiotic interpretation and analysis of the mentioned photographs. The results from this study indicate that newspapers studied in this research represent the photographs of friends and foes differently. In addition, these national newspapers held a friendly stance towards Bhutto and a hostile stance towards Saddam, while their position towards Bin Laden was generally vague and two- sided.

Being a man or woman entails some defaults and conceptualizations which depend on the culture of each society. These images of men and women are called gender stereotypes which exist in each society. Based on gender stereotypes, men and women have some behavioral and psychological traits and are fitted to do jobs which are different from each other. Stereotypes are reproduced over the generations by social institutions like family, mass media, peers and education system. Media, family and educational system are factors affecting socialization process. In one hand, media content is affected by culture; on the other hand media content affect the culture. Among all media, books, using reflection of norms, values and thoughts, reproduce culture strongly. In this paper, we have studied gender stereotypes in Al-e-Ahmad's fictions, one of the greatest contemporary writers of Iran. All of Al-e-Ahmad's books are studied in search for gender stereotypes. Our methodology is content analysis. Results reveal that many gender stereotypes (talkative, superstitious and emotional for women and aggressive, angry and dominant for men) are prevalent in Al-e-Ahmad fictions.

This article studies and compares Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States of America leader's discourses with using of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as methodology. Particularly, we have analyzed the Speeches of Imam Khomeini and George W. Bush. The results show that Islamic Republic of Iran leader's discourse is pluralism, while the United States of America leader's discourse is conspiracy and monopolist. Dominant discursive order of media and leader's speeches intend to form a positive image of their government legitimacy. We have analyzed the newspapers and governors’ discourses to discover their power relations to reproduce and to retain of the political and social structures that have legitimated their sovereignty. The government of the United States of America with using of power and violence language, and the government of Islamic Republic of Iran with using of authority language intend to form a positive image of their government legitimacy in international sphere.

This study aims at addressing the question of interaction between people and state in the virtual space which explains the issue of virtual citizenship in Iran. We attempted to examine the position of Iranian citizens in constructing virtual citizenship in Iran. In other words, this paper discusses the position of citizens in the state’s plans and ways of regulations in order to examine the position of Iranian citizens in the construction of virtual citizenship. To elaborate the issue, we studied the fourth and fifth five- year development plans of Iran. We analyzed the mentioned plans by laws’ typology – as the theoretical framework- and Scenario Building - as the methodology of research. Understanding the position of Iranian citizens in the fourth and fifth development plans paves the way for understanding Iranian virtual citizenship. The conclusion point of this paper is that these two five years development plans are positively expanding the virtual services to Iranian citizens in a very comprehensive and wide angles. However, it needs improvement in terms of giving more interactive position between the State and people for producing national data and content and also more interactivity and cooperation and social and political participation.

In this article, using glocalization, as a complementary or alternative term for globalization, we have studied religious themes in the Iranian rap music. Despite the globalization of rap music, we cannot say this music has been expanded with fixed western pattern around the world. Adolescents and young people around the world have created different rap music(s) that are influenced by their local cultures. In Iran, rap music both in the musical characteristics and themes, has been influenced by local culture. In one hand Iranian rap music has been influenced by global (Western) rap culture and on other hand it has been influenced by local (Iranian-Islamic) culture. We used Glock and Stark's model to study religious themes in the contemporary Iranian rap. This model describes doctrinal, intellectual, ethical-consequential, ritual, and experiential dimensions of religion. We used qualitative content analysis to explore the religious themes. Results show that religious themes in the Iranian rap music are part of local culture. Analyzing rap songs show that in doctrinal dimension, resurrection is the main theme. In ritual dimension, some Islamic behaviors and in experiential dimension, religious fears are of main themes. As summarized, Iranian rappers selected some limited dimensions of religion in their songs. According to our findings, in the Iranian rap music, no one has represented multidimensional religion.

This article offers a meta-analysis of ten articles and dissertations that their subject is sport and media. Many researchers have tried to study sports with a sociological approach, but these researchers have not obeyed any specific methodology and mostly followed their own interest. Hence, this meta-analysis is an attempt to re-analyze, mostly methodologically, some of the researches done on the media and sport in Iran, and to evaluate their strengths and weaknesses. Also, the present article is aimed to provide an opportunity to the professionals in the field of sociology of sports to know about researches on this field. The meta-analysis of ten articles and dissertation on media and sports demonstrates that most of the researches have used quantitative methods and have not paid attention to the qualitative methodologies and the intentions of communicators and cultural dimensions of media and sports are overlooked.