فصلنامه مطالعات عملیات روانی
پیاپی 27 (پاییز 1389)

Referring to the Holy Book of Islam, the Quran, we observe that the background of psychological operations dates back to the time before which man descended onto the earth. In fact, based on his oath, Satan has been seeking to mislead man since the beginning of man’s creation. Hence, psychological operations begin paratemporally with Satan’s disobeying God's command and gradually continue during history, especially during the time of the great prophets and the infallible Imams (a.s.). The series of articles entitled "A Review of Psychological Operations in Islam" seeks to study the emergence and development of psychological operations from the standpoint of Quranic verses, narrations, hadiths and other Islamic research sources. The historical research approach on psychological operations gives prominence to concentration on the psychological dimensions in the whole range of individual and social facets of man’s life from a religious perspective.

Media can be considered a new power source in the power handover process in the 21st century. Meanwhile, the Internet and cyberspace are considered charismatic and decisive communication tools in the strategic psychological operations due to their speed, accuracy, ability to transfer huge volumes of messages to a wide span of audience. Considering WikiLeaks a media-PSYOP instrument acting as the intermediate link between the performers and the audience of psychological operations, this research work conceives of WikiLeaks as a multilayered puzzle aiming at covert security-political interventions. It seeks to align the political decision makers with the international goals of the hegemonic powers through developing information trends and attacking their minds and perceptions. In so doing, it attempts to generate 'virtual power' and rebuild its declining potency in cyberspace by influencing the minds and hearts of the public audience. Examining the phenomenology of WikiLeaks and looking at how the psycho-cyber phenomenon was created, this article probes into the novel functions of psychological operations in cyberspace.

Psychological operations refer to a set of psychological and publicity measures taken by a country or group to influence the minds, thoughts, opinions and desires of the target countries or communities relying on political, economic and military tools and backgrounds, and aiming at bringing about the intended changes in the target audience. To explain the role of media in psychological operations, this paper, first, looks into the theories related to the effectiveness of media including the magic bullet theory, limited effects of media, cultivation, McLuhan's media determinism, Neumann's spiral of silence and McGuire's theory. Then, the tactics of media battle from the viewpoint of Toffler are examined and evaluated. At the end, the news deliveries of Persian BBC on the tenth presidential elections in Iran and the manner of utilizing media techniques for manipulating public opinion by this channel are reviewed. The results show that the most important features of effective media (particularly TV) frequently used by BBC News Channel include desirable fulfillment of media functions, observation of news dissemination principles and rules (news engineering), indirect instruction and publicity, making use of attractive and professional reporters and newscasters, interactive presentation of news and news reports, increasing the element of criticism in programs, observation of advertising principles and methods, considering the needs and disposition of the audience and making use of creative individuals in developing and preparing programs. This channel has managed to utilize these techniques to make its programs and news delivery effective.

Modern communication technologies have impacted the nature of human relations in the field of politics and culture in an unprecedented way. Although the Internet was originally developed for military purposes and has currently created virtual space for storing huge amounts of data, its security, social and cultural functions have gradually overshadowed its military aspect. After the Internet found its way into the political arena, governments were faced with a phenomenon that has alternately challenged them with threats and opportunities. Meanwhile, weblogs have found especial prominence among the various manifestations of the Internet. The development peed of this phenomenon is amazing. It received such a marvelous welcome in Iran, particularly among the youth, that Iran ranked fourth in the world as regards the number of the recorded blogs during the early years of the presence weblog on the Internet. Looking into the emergence of the Internet, this paper examines its socio-political impacts and the opportunities and threats resulting from this phenomenon and facing the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Communications and media currently cover up various social, political, cultural and economic activities. Meanwhile, the political importance of communications and media boosts as human communities get more complex and expand. This has been so to such an extent that it is currently believed that communications and media function as the axis of political life and political systems cannot create order in communities and have people's participation in political affairs without utilizing mass media and means of communication. Citizens cannot play an active role in their communities, participate in elections and interact with statesmen without mass media, either. To influence behavior is what counts in political communications. Political communicator, who is predominantly a politician here, tries to influence his/her audience using various communication tools, and the necessary rules and techniques. He/ She attempts to harmonize them with his/her plans and ideas, consolidate his/her position and expand his/her power range by influencing the public and attracting the public opinion. Examining the relationship between media and political communication, this article aims at determining the standing and functions of media in the field of political communications. The highly essential role of the Internet has been emphasized here.

Although various aspects of imperialism have been studied during the history, the media aspect of imperialism is the outcome of media technology's finding its way into the social life. Media have attracted the attention of the statesmen since the early stages of their emergence. During the two world wars, media were utilized as military tools to attack the thoughts, and the morale of the enemy forces and people. Since then, media have followed a domination policy in order to get the news agencies under their control and produce news and present it in line with the interests of capitalism and the countries following it. Accordingly, several academic studies have been conducted on media dominance of news imperialism. Following the advent of modern communication technologies, it seemed that the unidirectional news dissemination by the hegemonic system would come to a halt or at least would face major challenges. However, although modern media such as the Internet and the satellite channels have given suitable opportunities to various actors, the hegemonic system still plays the main role in news dissemination and media activities. The present paper is an attempt to introduce this situation and the theories explaining it more precisely. It also looks at the establishment of news networks and giving due consideration to modern media as a strategic model aimed at overcoming the hegemonic system.

The tenth presidential elections in Iran witnessed candidate's debates for the first time which led to creation of a new decision-making setting for the people. The debates created a political culture and contributed to people's participation in elections as well. The method utilized to investigate this phenomenon is survey type descriptive research along with some field work. A group of 249 people (including students, military personnel, businessmen, housewives, jobless people, etc.) residing in district four of Tehran served as the random sample for this study.The data collection instrument was a self-made questionnaire including a total of 19 questions and with Cronbach's alpha coefficient of 83. The results indicate that, based on the respondent's evaluation, seven out of the eight variables of the study were significantly higher than the mean and one variable (the negative points of the debates) was significantly lower than the mean. The results of the dependent t-test also showed that the observed differences by the assumed mean (number 3) are significant at 0/99 percent confidence level.

Today, as the world gets smaller and more complicated due to the increasing growth of the mass communication tools, media are utilized as essential tools to enforce the policies of the hegemonic powers and a global competition has been created in the field of media combat. Today, media are regarded as the gate through which culture is transmitted to people. The capability of media to influence the culture of the target audience has made the major powers exploit the various media tools in a soft manner in order to attract the hearts and minds of the target nations and consequently change their behavior. Providing a definition for culture on the basis of various theories, this article attempts to examine the role of media in soft war. Following this approach, the functions of the U.S. media weapons utilized in its soft war against the Islamic Republic of Iran are studied here. The case study reported here is based on Farsi 1, Hollywood and Radio Farda channels.