NEW MEDIA STUDIES
Year:2016 | Volume:1 | Issue:4 |Papers Count:7

Understanding the way other countries react to the phenomenon of satellite television can help Iran improve its policies in this regard. Comparative studies on media policies can help us understand changes and trends in such policies. We used two studies conducted in the Hijri years of 1373 and 1381 and chose 17 Asian countries using targeted sampling. After conducting a literature review in the field of media policies we draw a trajectory of policy- making. The results show that policy makers in the countries under question considered satellite television channels as (1) a disturbance to local media market and (2) a threat to national interests.These countries adopted two policies: (a) acceptance, which means the government shouldn’t interfere; (b) limiting the free flow of information. Comparing the results of the study with the results of another study which was conducted 21 years ago, we can see than the countries that used to be in the second category have gotten closer to the first one.

The present research aims to study the impacts of watching satellite TV Shows on the local dressing style of the Kurdish women of the city of Paveh through a case study of the TV show Harim-e Soltan. We tried to find the reasons and motives behind such changes. Taking a qualitative approach, we conducted ethnography using semi- structured interviews. The statistical population includes the Kurdish woman between 15 to 50 in the Hijri years of 1393 and 1394 who lived in the city of Paveh and used a dressing style similar to that of the TV show. We used targeted sampling and enough number of interviews to fulfill the needs of the research questions. The results show that the localstook ideas from the TV show and combined them with their own dressing styles. We can't consider watching the TV show as the only effective factor. This factor played a role along with other factors.

This article aims to study the representation of cultural values in computer games. We conducted a semiotic analysis on three computer games sponsored by three Iranian state organizations. The goal of the research was to investigate how Iranian game makers presented cultural values in the content of the computer games. With a qualitative approach, we used Roland Barthes’ semiotic method to analyze cultural codes and Philip Tagg's method to study media signs. The results indicate that the computer games did not use certain game capacities such as interactivity and player-made narrations. In terms of cultural values, the findings show that there is a close relationship between ideological content of the games and the cultural ideologies of the game producing organizations.

Recent years have witnessed great changes in the field of mobile communication with the emergence of smartphones. The expansion of modern technologies is borderless and the Iranian society has also witnessed the social changes caused by media technologies. The lives of the youth, as the most accepting group when it comes to new technologies, have been affected and changed by these technologies. The present study is concerned with the process of acquisition and domestication of smartphones by the Iranian youth. With a qualitative approach, we conducted in-depth interviews with a number of bachelor students studying in the city of Tehran and found six main categories of smartphone consumption in the personal and social lives of the interviewed Iranian youth. These categories are as follows: accessing information including looking up facts, reading news. The second category is location-based applications that include showing locations, controlling locations, and feeling safe. The third category is communicating including using social networks, using some application programs and getting detached from real communities. The fourth category called technological adaptation includes being everywhere, ease of learning, and fluidity of technology. The fifth category is individual independence. This includes independence from family and forming selective relationships. Finally, the sixth category is controlling technology consumption. It includes controlling how one’s virtual identity is represented.

Social networks are among the most effective communication environments and despite being very young they have achieved high influence among the youths. Analyzing the content of users' comments on social networks, can reveal hidden layers and the underlying meanings of those remarks. Netnography is a new approach in the field of social networks and cyber space communications. In Netnography the comments and suggestions of the customers are studied in order to understand the attitudes, images, and emotions of the users in online communities. For this study the comments written by the students of management at a university in the city of Shahrood were studied using Netnography and analyzed based on grounded theory. Then important issues were determined by experts and because some of the comments were incomplete we prioritized them based on fuzzy preference relations with incomplete information.

The invention and development of the internet and new media forms have only made the issue of credibility more important. Many studies have addressed the comparative nature of media credibility. This study is an effort to identify and explore some factors that may be in significant relation with perceived credibility of media. Three sets of factors including media form, media content, and audience were studied to find if they correlate with perceived media credibility. We analyzed questionnaires filled by 250 Iranians and found significant relations. The results suggest that the three sets of factors can be used to study credibility and its correlations. They also indicated that other than general demographics and behaviors such as media consumption, the individuals' personality traits can have significant correlations with the perceived credibility of media content. This explorative study can pave the way for more comprehensive studies, especially those with more comprehensive tests and more respondents. This results show some evidence that.

The present study aims to investigate the possibility of creation of trust culture in cyber space regarding its structural properties. We used the theory of social trust by Piotr Sztompka and Handerson as the theoretical framework of the study. The study was conducted in the city of Islamshahr in December 2012. The statistical population included all the people who went to an internet café in the cityfrom whom 383 people were chosen as the sample. The results indicate that trust culture has been formed in the cyber space, however at a lower average level compared to the physical world. The results also show a direct relation between the structure of cyber space and the formed trust culture. The structure of cyber space showed a stronger relation with the mental dimension of trust culture rather than its objective dimension. Different cyber space environments showed different levels of trust culture. Facebook showed the strongest trust culture and emails and game environments came in second and third level.