NEW MEDIA STUDIES
Year:2015 | Volume:1 | Issue:3 |Papers Count:7

Social capital, which is formed by the network of relationships among human beings, plays a major role in our lives. One of the factors that may affect social capital is how and how much we use information and communication technologies (ICTs). This study investigates how ICT consumption is related to social capital. To study social capital, we used Coleman’s definition and typology and analyzed the effects of ICTs on social capital from four aspects: information storing, exchanging, transferring and processing devices. We surveyed a random sample of 388 students of Allameh Tabataba'i University and Khajeh Nasir University in the city of Tehran, Iran. The descriptive findings of the study indicate that the students comply with social norms and laws to a high degree but they tend not to participate in social groups and organizations. Regarding functional aspects of social capital, we found that the students’ generalized and interpersonal trust were rather high. Our main hypothesis that there is a positive relationship between ICT consumption and social capital was verified, although the level of the relationship was rather low.

The present study is a research on the capabilities of women in the cyberspace. Regardless of the limitations of the real world, cyberspace can empower women participation and individual capabilities. If woman have the necessary skills and motivations, they can use the internet and content production to their benefit. They can alsomake their voice heard and change the society’s stereotypes and images about them. However, there are requirements to achieve such goals. This study aims to find those requirements and investigate their impacts on the empowerment of women in the cyberspace. A questionnaire was prepared and given to the women active in the cyberspace. Data gathered through 429 completed questionnaires was analyzed using SPSS. The results show that different variables including purposeful activities, knowing other active women, level of activity and media literacy can improve women's capabilities in the cyberspace.

The rapid development of ICTs in the early 21st century has brought about dramatic changes in the youths’ personal and social identifications. Spending long hours in virtual spaces consuming popular culture news and products (in this case Korean pop music), while providing the youth with a huge amount of information and entertainment, also provides them with unique experiences through which they can express themselves. Drawing on a cyber- ethnography of the fans of Korean popular culture in Iran, this paper aims to show the impacts this virtual fandom poses to young adolescents and to show how the cultural products consumed in this environment help create a global- local identity. The results suggest that this fandom culture has differentiating, complementary and compensatory functions and in a complex way helps strengthen cosmopolitan identities among the Iranian youths.

Iranians' significant interest in satellite TV channels necessitates the study of the content broadcasted by these channels by deconstructing their messages and finding what they have taken as granted. The present study conducts a discourse analysis using Laclau and Mouffe's method on the programs broadcasted by manoto channel. By deconstructing the messages and disconnecting signifiers and the signified the discourse assumptions of the programs will be identified and articulated. People, tolerance, new experiences, having fun, and culture and art were identified as the central signifiers within the programs. It was also found that the identities most frequently represented by the channel were Iranians and Islamic Republic of Iran. Iranians has been situated in the chain of equivalence and Islamic Republic of Iran has been situated in the chain of difference. The channel also uses empty signifiers and metaphoric discourses and negatively represents the discourse of Iran’s government by showing signifiers that are absent from the government’s discourse. Moreover, the channel has tried to include those empty signifiers in its discourse in order to marginalize its rival’s discourse and consolidate its semantic hegemony. Among other discourses found in the programs one could name spirituality without religion and dogma and also positively representing Pahlavi Monarchy linking it to the nostalgic past.

The present paper aims to study the concept of celebritization after the Internet and examine the effects of new virtual media in changing the meaning of stardom. Studying a local case and considering the meaning of celebritization and superstars in a movie from different perspectives we tried to study the role of the Internet and virtual spaces in transforming the meaning of a cinema superstar. In a qualitative research we approached the study from a cultural studies perspective and used semiotics as the method. The results indicate that cinema celebrities have made a considerable change by directly interacting with the audiences. Also sharing personal photos by celebrities have made a considerable change in the way people perceive the meaning of stardom. Celebrity making which used to be a process in the hands of mass media is now affected by the actors themselves. In fact, post-internet stardom is the new meaning of stardom.

Today media organizations try to use the potentials of the new convergent media in order to attract and keep audiences. Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) is one of these new media. Using the new media needs new communication models and the traditional structures of media organizations cannot be relied on. This is why new organizational structures should be designed and implemented. This study aims to introduce a suitable and customized organizational structure for an Internet Protocol Television at the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB). First a comparative study was done on organizational structures of 13 major IPTV operators in other countries. Then in-depth interviews were conducted and the data were analyzed with a qualitative approach. The two groups of participants in the study were university professors and experts in the fields of new media and organizational structure as well as managers of the national project of IPTV at IRIB. We used snowballing to reach new interviewees. Based on the results of the study to avoid a complicated bureaucratic hierarchy best way of establishing an Iranian IPTV is establishing a nerve center consisting of different organizations involved in IPTV project. This nerve center would be managed by IRIB and the organizations involved in it would be in a matrix relation with each other.

Lifestyle can be a known pattern in any region or country and some believe that lifestyle is a personal or social concept affected by many factors. With today’s scientific and technological developments people’s daily interactions have been revolutionized. New media have affected various fields in the lives of different societies. This study uses a descriptive approach and looks into important lifestyle indicators such as clothing, behavior, eating, etc. in order to investigate the role of social media in personal and social lives of the members of public libraries in Iran’s Fars province using a SWOT analysis. The goal of this study is to understand how social media may have improved or harmed their lifestyles regarding the mentioned indicators. Finally some solutions will be proposed to improve individuals’ lifestyles using social media.