CULTURAL STUDIES & COMMUNICATION
Year:2015 | Volume:11 | Issue:40 |Papers Count:9

At the age of increasing competition among media, offering high-quality services and presence in media markets is considered as a crucial factor for news agencies in doing their job properly and professionally. Looking at the 180-year-old history of news agencies, from its beginning from Havas (1835) to Associated Press (1846) and Reuters (1851) the owners and managers of the news agencies had an eye on valuable markets of information exchange and hoping for ample incomes of this market.Since few decades ago, at the zenith of the establishment and work of national news agencies, especially after the Second World War, by patterning on the production, supplying and sale methods of successful news agencies, many national agencies have entered the national and international media markets.while, in Iran, more than 80 years after the establishment of official and national news agency (originally called Pars and now Islamic Republic News Agency), at the age of new agencies’ rivalryin producing and selling news and information, IRNA’s source of income is government budget and its income from its presence in media markets is insignificant.This article performed a comparative study on IRNA (as Iran’s sole official news agency) and three international news agencies, Associated Press, France Press and Reuters and India’s national news agency, PTI and then asked the opinions of media experts in order to recognise the challenges that IRNA is facing, and also draw an ideal situation.The research has used a qualitative method, including a combination of comparative research and in-depth interviews. The results suggest that IRNA should not publish all stories on its website for free and it should use specific ways to earn an income from selling various news productions. The solutions offered by the experts include publishing advertisements on IRNA’s website, creating an agency and investment holding in the field of multimedia productions, selling high-quality and archive news photographs, producing marketable high-quality news-films.

This study argues how video games induct fear in players. Authors’ aim is inquiry about four prominent horror video games include “Amnesia: The Dark Descent”, “F.E.A.R 2: Project Origin”, “Dead Space” and “Silent Hill: Homecoming”. Taking into account the essence of digital games (a type of interactive media). In this article two qualitative methods were used to approach research’s aim, namely; “participant observation” and “thematic analysis”. The article extracts and makes inference sense of fear model from the video games based on analysis of three main themes includes “Environmental Characteristics”, “Enemy/Monster” and “Main character/Protagonist”. The model includes 13 frightening categories which were summarized in 3 essential factors namely; “limitation”, “violence” and “unfamiliarity”.

The purpose of this study is “understanding the tolerance in the scientific community of the social sciences”. Tolerance has different dimensions and aspects. In this paper, scientific tolerance among professors of social science is more discussed. Theoretical foundations of the study with an emphasis on the theory of "communicative action" have been developed. This study was conducted by using qualitative research method and grounded theory approach, and data collection was done through interviews with professors of Social Sciences in universities in Tehran. The results indicate that based on an understanding of the studied professors, there is no tolerance among professors. This is influenced by the following causes: lack of culture of tolerance, political conditions, economic conditions and the monopoly. Also, circumstances such as gender, age and academic hierarchy are effective in the intensification or control of tolerance in the scientific community. Actors by adoption of strategies such as keeping distance and compulsive tolerance, are trying to deal with this phenomenon.

Serious games are a kind of video games that employ the potential of entertaining in this new medium in order to fulfill certain functions in the fields of education, training, promotional, ideological and other social interests. These Games manipulate a form of "rhetoric" that exclusively concerned to medium’s technical and communicational requirements.The aim of this study is providing a critical taught on how cross-function of structural elements of serious games as a kind of media texts create a form of rhetorical means to fulfill the main function of the text. Rhetorical means are emerged “structures” from the companion of elements of video games as media text. In this article, after reviewing the available literature, by combining harmonious methodological and theoretical approaches in media studies– rhetoric and ludology- a method was proposed to analyze rhetoric in computer. Then by using this proposed method, “McDonald' s videogame” as a case study was analyzed.Results showed that in devising McDonald's video game, through combination of aesthetic elements in three layers of the text -signal layer, narrative layer, and procedural layer- a variety of measures are taken to create rhetorical means. Some of these measures are include: Use of some names, logos and acknowledged legal identities in the real and historical world of in the world of the text. Restricting world of the game, presenting some information about historical world and playing with them in the world of the text, induction of some kind of logic and thinking manner about a specific thing that is common between text world and real and historical world.

Death is a pervasive phenomenon and one of the main concerns and anxieties for all human beings. Besides, thoughts and concerns about death are constructed in a social context and religious traditions are one of the main sources for answering the question of death and overcoming unpleasant experiences associated with it. Additionally, with the growth of non-religious sensemaking systems in the modern world, this question is brought up that how people in non-religious sensemaking systems encounter with the problems of death and obsessions related to it. This article studies the attitudes of students toward death according to their religiosity status. Research data were collected through purposive and theoretical sampling and also through open-end and in-depth interview. For analyzing obtained information grounded theory is used. The results of study are formed in eight categories. “Death attitude engrossed to life” is brought up central category and students’ attitude towards death have been compared in two attitudes, religious and secular.

This article studies critical media literacy of female cyber-activist in Iran and their purposefulness.The main goal of this article is to be made aware of critical media literacy level in both consumption part and production part. Media literacy enables woman that control and manage what offered to her ahead of media offering and also media enables them to use the Internet to take advantage of internet to make their voice heard.In order to be made of aware of critical media literacy the survey method is used. Online questionnaire were available for cyber-activist women in social media and electronic questionnaires were sent to them. In order to have a random sampling the days of week were selected randomly and 429 approved questionnaires were analyzed by SPSS.After analyzing it was indicated that there is a significant difference between different age groups and the critical media literacy in the consumption part. But in production part, there is no significant difference. There is a significant difference between different groups with experience of using internet and critical media literacy in both consumption and production parts. Also, after hypothesis testing it was revealed that the critical media literacy in the consumption and the production correlates with purposefulness of activities (cyber-activities).

Lake Urmia is the biggest lake in the Middle East and the second salty water lake in the world. Drying away has threatened this lake in recent years. Drying up of this lake can affect the nature, economy, population structure and, and in general entity of region. But the problem which is brought up beside Lake Urmia problem is that to what extent the people are related to the nature of this lake. Do people engage with this lake and its critical situation mentally, physically and practically? They are indifference? The answer to this question and also, finding the correlation between cultural capital and citizens relatedness with Urmia Lake have been the aims of this research.The method of this research is survey, and a standard questionnaire used in gathering data. Population consists of all Urmia citizens aged 15 and older.384 people were selected through Cochran formula and random sampling.The results, that analyzed by Spss software, shows that relatedness with Lake Urmia is high and mentioned variable correlates with two aspects of cultural capital. Additionally, rest of the independent variables in regression model can provide 23 percent of changes in dependent variable, relatedness, with the nature (Lake Urmia).

Kolah Ghermezi series as one of the most popular children’s TV shows which has been acclaimed by all family members in different ages. This program is listed as the children’s TV shows and it is expected to have learning content for the children.This research studies ethical-learning approach in Kolah Ghermezi program. The theoretical framework of this paper has used the “constructivism” approach in education sciences. The main question of this study is that how the learning of ethical issue is occurred.Based on the main question, all the episodes of the program were watched and three sequences which contained three ethical issues such as politeness, honesty and responsibility were selected in order to be examined by semiotic approach. The semiotics approach is conducted in this paper according to Keith Selby and Ron Cowdery pattern The results demonstrate that the educational approach conceived from the relationship between the characters, when the puppets of sitcom are taught, is closer to constructivism approach. This approach is considered as learner-based approach and requires direct contact of learner with learning current. Whereas Television is not an interactive media, certainly it can’t teach ethic to its audiences through learner-based approaches.Therefore direct explanation is used when audiences of Kolah Ghermezi, at home children, are addressed. Additionally, during the program audiences observe that some behaviors of characters are encouraged or discouraged, so it can be said in the field of teaching the child audiences, the program is closer to Albert Bandura cognitive-social learning approach.