Socio-Cultural Strategy
Year:2017 | Volume:6 | Issue:22 |Papers Count:13

An overview of research drawn up on the impact of social networking virtual world on the lifestyle of young people reveals different and sometimes contradictory results, for which the reasons can be achieved mainly through a methodological meta-analysis. For this purpose, after initial refining, 16 Journal articles selected through Magiran scientific information database and meta-analyzed based on different methodological standards and theoretical frameworks used. The overall picture obtained from this research, shows lack of theory construction, domination of survey method, absence of mixed methods, fragmentation and lack of coherence in the operationalization of lifestyle, different understanding of social networking media, limitation of social networking media studied, methodological lag in regard to theoretical framework, and ignoring the validity of research tools, generalization despite using non-probability sampling methods and subjective evaluation of the impacts of social networking media, all of which can explain differences and contradictions in the results obtained in the reviewed studies.

This article is an attempt to analyze the results of a study on how Kurdish women in the city of Ilam perceive guerrilla war documentaries aired by P.K.K satellite network, i. e., Newroz TV. In order to perform such research ambition, we rely on the cultural studies tradition of taking into consideration the concepts of power and perception, when analyzing ethnic minorities. Accordingly, a synthesis of perception theory and ethnic minority’s theory is constructed to address how Kurdish women perceive documentaries on female participation in guerrilla groups. The problematic of this research concerns with satellite TV programs on ethnic minorities, especially now that they have attracted minority groups’ attentions. The producers of such TV programs make these documentaries on the assumption that their audience can use them to revive their ethnic identity. This is while almost all the studies that have so far been done on ethnic groups excluded the perception of women as readers of the unpopular texts, including texts that deal with ethnic identity. This article tackles this very issue and takes it to be a profound scientific matter that has been neglected in the studies of ethnic groups. It uses qualitative approach and focus group discussions with a sample of 24 interviewees to gather its data so to indicate whether or not Kurdish women in the city of Ilam assume the position of facilitating participation or resisting participation in guerrilla groups. Some of the findings indicate that Kurdish women in the city of Ilam tend to negotiate with the dominant Kurdist discourse of Newroz TV. They nevertheless refute female participation in guerrilla groups and do not consider it as part of the discourse of Kurdism. These women even decode the documentaries on women participation in guerrilla groups in opposite way as the intentions of program makers.

Users and policymakers as the key stakeholders of these networks play crucial roles in the development and success of these networking tools. Hence, understanding these networks success factors from each of these stakeholders can form a conceptual framework for designing more successful social networks. Despite the existence of the wealthy body of the literature on the topic of social network success and the important roles of users and policymakers, the problem is that little has been done on studying the factors that affect the success of social networks from a user and policymaker perspective and also the connection between these two perspectives. Conducting an analytical review of related research studies, this study identified 89 success factors and then categorized them into six main conceptual categories that contribute to the success of the social networks. The emergent patterns from this analytical review of the literature establish a conceptual framework for understanding factors that would affect the successful design, implementation, and management of the social networks. This can be of value to social networks founders, designers, and managers who aim to initiate or evaluate their social networks. The conceptual framework proposed in this study also can be of value to the researchers who aim to conduct empirical studies to understand conceptions of social networks in real life contexts from the perspectives of those who design and use social networks.

The discourse theory developed by Laclau and Mouffe is regarded an outstanding one in structuring a discourse in which the existing relations and components in a discourse and the way hegemony becomes dominant in the community are stated clearly. Nonetheless, the application of this theory in social issues is not dynamic enough; therefore, some interventions must be made regarding its application in social domains due to its political basis. It was found that social imagination is a fundamental concept, which has a determining role in social changes and the level and quality of a community’s mobility, regarding its constituents. It can also be influential in the recognition of internal layers of some courses, which lead to social changes in a community because of its connection to some concepts including discourse, social representation, myth, social construction of reality, and rituals. It would be more objective and applicable in discourse promotion among nations who benefit from history, culture and deep theoretical myths if these factors are taken in to account in studying their social interactions or ritual relations which contribute greatly to their subjectivity to life. This article aims to create more dynamicity in the discourse theory. For this purpose and to creating a more dynamic discourse theory through communication theory ritual, the research has been conducted on the basis of the categories obtained from interviews with twelve members of the Expediency Discernment Council in Iran.

This article investigates the press portrayal of foreign relations developments under the influence of the dominant discourse in foreign policy. For this purpose, the representation of the United States of America and the United Kingdom in Iranian newspapers were studied during the reform and conservative eras. In this study, content analysis was used as the method of research. The data were gathered, coded and inserted into the SPSS for descriptive and analytical tables. In the descriptive section, variables such as “the western country highlighted”, “subject of foreign news”, “news stance regarding Iran-USA ties”, “news stance regarding Iran-UK ties”, “image of the US in news” and “image of the UK in news” were studied. In the analytical section, the statistical relationship between the press portrayal of the US/UK and the political period was investigated. Findings indicate that the press in Iran are under the influence of the dominant foreign policy discourse when covering news about the US and the UK, and portray these two Western countries in accordance with the official foreign policy of Iran in each political period. During the reform era, the press portrayed the US and the UK positively in line with the détente policy of the reformist government; however during the conservative era, a negative image was portrayed by the press as relations between Iran and the West deteriorated.

This article tries to study the role of new media technologies-especially social networks- in the field of international diplomacy. After determining the position of new media, it offers a model for I.R. of Iran's diplomacy to utilize these social media. What is now we understand from global trend is the elevation of the status of diplomacy in international politics, and it seems that in the future, its status will be higher as well. However, this diplomacy is much more complicated than what existed in the past, and most of today's governments don't have any strategy to exploit and adapt to the new global realities. What makes it different from the past is nothing less than a fundamental transformation in the field of communication and information, which has changed the nature of many concepts, especially power. Today, information moves ahead of power and this evolution like an arms race in the field of information, causes rapid changes in communication technology and necessitates the study of nature of these technologies and offers a new definition and structure for basic concepts that influenced human destiny. Among these concepts, is diplomacy, that should be studied under the changing nature of a macro concept; that is, power. In this collection, the authors have tried to discover the mental models about the nature of future diplomacy and have analyzed these patterns. Finally, the authors have suggested the networking diplomacy as a doctrine with a new definition and structure as an efficient model for I.R. of Iran's diplomacy.

This article considering the high portion and status of social network Facebook in the youth leisure and cultural consumption, has paid to study its effects and consequences on the youth social capital. In the theoretical section based on results of theoretical approaches and the review of accessible experimental resources, a conceptual framework has been set up and the researches hypotheses have been proposed in its format. This study has been done by survey method by using questionnaire with a sample population of 300 young people from Piranshahr. The results show that the time of youth membership in Facebook was 4 years and in average, they spend more than 3 hours in Facebook on a day. The main incentive of youth involvement in Facebook was leisure and identity issues and tendency to interaction and enlightenment are the other reasons. In terms of social capital, our findings show that the average of capital social among sample participants evaluated in average. The study showed that there is a direct relationship between using Facebook and social capital. However, the way which they use it and its intensity changes the relation. In the other words, the more the youth use Facebook, their social capital will decrease. The most reverse effect of Facebook is on youth political participation. Multivariate regression analysis shows that the youth social capital, respectively, are strongly related to variables of age, incentive use, economic-social status, length of membership and amount of using Facebook. The aforementioned variables determine 50% of changes in youth social capital.

The aim of this article is to investigate «the role of social networks in promoting the culture of reading. This research is based on the case study of followers of Ketabdoni page in Instagram social network». This research is a descriptive and analytical survey. The data of this research are provided by online questionnaire which was put on the Ketabdoni page of Instagram social network for the users to answer it. The statistical population of this research consists of 418 followers of Ketabdoni page in Instagram social network. The data collected from the questionnaires later have been edited, coded and analysed by the SPSS software. The findings indicate that membership in the book pages of Instagram, encourages their users to more reading. Most respondents have expressed that reviews and critics about new books in Instagram have encouraged them to read those books. In the time of choosing the most important benefits of sharing photos and book contents in Instagram, the respondents chose encourage reading, exchange with the readers, information about the book field, increase the knowledge and information (about the books), strengthen their participation in society and their communication. According to the results of statistical tests, there is a relation between the book contents in Instagram social network and increasing willingness of the users to reading. There is a relation between the existence of cultural institutions and elite cultural pages in Instagram social network and the willingness of the users to reading. This is the first research on the role of Instagram in promoting the reading. Its findings can be used in planning and policy –making in institutions that concentrate their activities on the areas related to the book field.

In this article, the content of the primary school textbooks was analyzed in regard to the concept of the “other” which involved the disabled people and patients, child labor and different family styles components. The statistical population of the present research comprised all of the primary school textbooks (first to sixth grades) published in 1393 school year. The sampling method of the present research was a purposeful sampling. The data collection tool was checklist. The measure of data analysis comprised of the texts, questions and pictures. For data analysis and in order to gain the importance coefficient of each of the components, the Shannon Entropy method was used. The content analysis showed that attention to the other components and the distribution of these components in primary school textbooks are not accomplished equally and balanced and are not have regulated based on content analysis scientific principles. Moreover, the data analysis showed that the content of the above-mentioned textbooks can’t play an important role in improving the conception of the other in students. General education must cover everybody in any job and position including rich and poor, healthy and patient and etc., and it must also consider all of them equally. Therefore, the education system must do its best to fight against discrimination and bias in textbooks.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the scientific cooperation with international universities and institutions of higher education in Iran. The research methods in the first step was qualitative and the next step was quantitative. The statistical population in this study consisted of faculty members of top universities whose scope of cooperation with international journals is declared by the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology (Tehran, Shahid Beheshti, Sharif, Amir Kabir University of Technology) amounting to 3169 people. So the sample according to Cochran formula was 342 people. The research tool was a semi-structured questionnaire determining the validity of the opinions of experts in the field of international scientific co-operation and to calculate the reliability of the questionnaire, Cronbach's alpha was used. Alpha was calculated for the questionnaire 92/0. In order to analyze data, in qualitative and quantitative content analysis, factor analysis test, one-sample T test was used, and weighted average. The findings suggest that the situation in universities and higher education institutions of international scientific cooperation is rather favorable and Iran's higher education to keeping pace with the global movement and is moving to achieve the goals of Vision 1404 document, however there is a long way to eliminate the obstacles in this regard.

Due to the importance of culture in a creative city, urban planners must adapt a cultural approach in their planning and use cultural resources for the development of the city. In this regard, the aim of this article is to evaluate the cities of Semnan province based on cultural factors affecting urban creativity. This research has been conducted by a descriptive-analytic method. This study introduces cultural factors affecting urban creativity by using the model of vikor to measurement and evaluation in the cities of Semnan province. The results obtained from the model of vikor indicate that there is a considerable difference between large cities and small cities of Semnan province in terms of these cultural factors. In this context, the three cities of Semnan, Shahroud and Damghan have most cultural resources with more than 72 percent of the total urban population of Semnan province and naturally they have much higher potential for the realization of creative city and in contrast, 17 other cities with 28 percent of the total urban population of the province, have not much cultural resources at their disposal and have little potential to become a creative city.

This article emphasizes on the status of human and cultural development of Islamic countries based on two indicators: the adult literacy rate and the penetration of the Internet in these countries. Thus, we considered these two indicators among the various indicators of human and cultural development. The main question in this article is: what is the status of human and cultural development in the Muslim countries with an emphasis on the literacy rate and internet penetration? The article also poses two more questions: what has happened to the development of literacy in Muslim countries during the past five decades? Is there a great gap between the literacy rate in Muslim countries and the world average rate? To answer these questions, we used documentary and library methods and conducted a data analysis. The findings of this article show that Muslim countries have been able to improve their adult literacy rate and Human Development Index during the past decades. Also, there is a great gap between the Persian Gulf states and African Muslim countries. The main reason for this is the economic situation of the Persian Gulf states in terms of their GDP per capita which has allowed them to increase their Internet penetration. On the whole, there is a great gap between the Islamic countries and world standards in terms of indicators such as human development rates and internet penetration.

According to the importance of the topic that is cyberspace and its effects on social ethics, especially for students, the main goal of research is to check the impact of using the cyberspace (internet) on the social solidarity of Tehran university students. The method used in this research is descriptive, and it is considered an applied research because it is a survey based on goal. Required data of this research were obtained by questionnaire, and the obtained data was checked. The population of this research includes students of Tehran university. The sampling method is level-cluster sampling and the total quantity of samples is 196 persons. The results of research indicate that unexpectedly the students of Tehran university use the cyberspace less than usual, and have less addiction to internet, and the students, mental communication, ethics and social solidarity are in a good condition. Also, according to rank correlation coefficient research of Spearman, there is a positive and meaningful relation between social solidarity and using cyberspace among the students of Tehran university, this means that the more use of cyberspace influences the increment of moral values and vice versa. It means that the objectively use of cyberspace among the students of Tehran university does not result in decline in moral values, even using cyberspace causes an increase in their moral values.