Journal of Communication Research
Year:2010 | Volume:17 | Issue:3 (63)|Papers Count:10

Supporting communicative rights is a new legal idea in the field of communications. The article tries to introduce the decade-old idea of "communicative rights." Therefore, the focus of the study is to discuss the concepts of the subject and present a documentary study on the field. Furthermore, it draws on a field study, carried out through Q methodology to determine to what extent such important issues as accessibility, ability and application of information, are considered by Iranians (experts and news writers).The findings show that Iranians' views regarding research on communicative rights resemble the worldwide attitudes on the subject.

The present study aims to examine the principles of collective action in using music in radio. Given the complexity of the nature of music, the article introduces music application as a social phenomenon which is unavoidably under the influence of social developments.The article further defines collective action for using music, saying that by only changing a single element, one cannot create a stable change in any types of music. It also urges radio programmers who are the main actors of music activities in radio, to raise the quality of their own musical taste and their audience through research and increasing their information on various fields such as the philosophy of traditional and Western music, main producers of traditional and Western music, increasing understanding of how to use different kinds of music in terms of the four main functions of music in radio and observing religious limits on using music in radio as a mass media. The article also addresses the lawfulness of music in terms of Islamic Sharia. It differentiates between "music" and "useless songs" and introduces "usefulness" as one of the main criterion for differentiating between original music and useless songs. By "usefulness", the writer means remembering God while assessing a piece of music.

Communications experts treat media corporations as very complex organizations. Different social and cultural components affecting media activities and the complication of human issues raise obscurity in producing and supplying media products and pose a serious risk for management. Besides, management based on taste and experience sometimes not only brings about failures despite the huge costs and applied methodologies, but also might bears reverse results. Therefore, the present study aims to identify and introduce a suitable methodology for media management in order to take account of these complexities and obscurities and bring about a boost in organization. Through classifying media organizations attributes and extracting their management requirements as well as examining the level of their compatibility, the authors finally suggest soft systems or S.S.M. as a methodology suitable for media organizations' atmosphere, a method which satisfies their needs.

In economics, the scarcity of any stuff determines its price in the market. Due to increasing number of media and information bombardment of the audience, "the attention of audience" and the "information they send" have become "the scarce" thing in media economics rather than information. Scarce attention has prompted a new theory on the nature of economy named "the economy of attention". The present article aims to introduce the "economy of attention" and examine its role in media economics.The article first defines the "nature of economy" and explains the role of "scarcity" in it. Then, it tries to elaborate on methods of assessing and managing the audience attention. The article also defines two types of attentions, i.e. "real" and "fake", and finally proposes the possibility of a change in the way audience pays attention to media stimuli, i.e. a change from general attention to deep attention. This, in turn, could be the subject of future research.

The present article aims to compare the status of representation and the flow of cultural discourse in yellow magazines in the time span of decades of 1360, 1370 and 1380 Based on this, the study employs a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods such as content analysis and semiotics, to answer such significant questions as understanding narrative and aesthetics, sub-cultural propensities and represented values in yellow magazines. To this aim, the study carries out content analysis on 144 issues of the 6 following yellow magazines: Javanan Emrouz (Today's youths), Zane Ruz (Today's woman), Khanevadeh (Family), Ruzhaye Zendagi (Life's Days), Hamshahri Javan (Young Fellow Citizen) and Dokhtaran (Girls). Beside the content analysis, the study also examines the cover of 52 volumes of the aforementioned magazines during the given period using picture semiotics methodology. The research findings show that yellow magazines usually are confused in representing culture, which could be called a cultural schizophrenia. In other words, these magazines keeps fluctuating between representing popular components of the culture and life style on the one hand, and standard components of the culture and local culture on the other. For the same token, analyzing identity becomes very difficult for researchers.

Today, planning to turn outlooks and chosen mottos of radio channels into plans and then programs is of concern as a serious and obscure issue for media managers and planners. The reason is that traditional and experimental methodologies suffer such faults and shortcomings as being static or lacking integrity.Therefore, the present article aims to analyze principles and conditions for planning in radio channels, and suggest employing a reverse method in discourse analysis as a new method for solving the aforementioned problem. So, the article tries to give a better understanding of theoretical concepts and principles of the field by putting forward the principles of radio planning, e.g. paying attention to social system, radio attributes and channel mission, and explaining discourse theories as well as discourse analysis steps and reviewing them all. It finally explains a reverse model (from discourse to text) for planning radio content planning.

One of the important sections of media programs is the interviews which are given to different individuals from various groups. Undoubtedly, the interviewees have some rights that media should observe. The present article aims to look into the rights of interviewees.Some of these rights are as following: Freedom to take an interview, including the right to express readiness to start the interview and going on with the interview; avoiding violation of interviewee's privacy, including not disclosing his identity through releasing voice, image and other personal information; the right to dominate the interview in terms of copyright, the right to sell the content, the right to censorship and the right to prevent the release of some parts of the interview; and finally the right to use the contents as legal documents. The right of "announcing the rights of the interviewee" is a guarantee and a prerequisite to observing the abovementioned rights. Given laws and regulations as well as media common trends and practice, it is expected that various shortcomings and faults pestering mass media would be removed through levying certain regulations monitoring media performance as well as through commitment to religious principles and professional moralities.