مهدی محسنیان راد

Today, computer games have overtaken the Hollywood film industry, which Boellstroff believes that it should be called the gaming age. On the other hand, the communities that have emerged in the development of computer game technology in different societies and cultures, as a community, even in Iran, have such an attractive study and knowledge that the media field resulting from the presence of this new media should be considered by communication researchers and social researchers. Therefore, this article tries to answer the question that what are the characteristics, communication functions and facilities of game nets in Iranian society from a media and communication field of study? The researcher, based on the Participant observation method observed 35 game nets in Tehran and along with 53 semi-structured interviews with the users of these game nets, analyzed the obtained data using the content analysis method (Wolcott model). As a result, 10 types of game nets related to location, architecture and facilities were identified in Tehran. The superficiality and shallowing of group communication determine the strengthening of communication at the neighborhood level, and also provide gamers and administrators of these communities with at least 12 types of possibilities. This article, for the first time, provides a historical overview of the evolution of game nets in Iranian society, along with suggestions for policy makers in this field.

Today, Computer Games have emerged as a new field for the development of new media in the dimension of socialization, which according to many experts, in the coming years will become the number one entertainment industry in the world. On the other hand, gamenets in Iranian society as a place where the behaviors and communication actions of video and computer game users have a special place in drawing Cultures of Gaming in societies, including the Iranian society, so this article is aimed at answering the question, what is the pattern of behaviors and communication actions of computer game users in the GameNets of Tehran?Therefore, to answer this question, the researcher based on the participant observation method observed 35 gamenets in Tehran by cluster sampling and along with 53 semi-structured interviews with the users of these gamenets based on available samples, and notes and pictures prepared By observers and also referring to the Social networking pages of these communities, the obtained data were analyzed using the method of Thematic analysis and based on the Wolcott model. As a result, 17 patterns of behaviors and communication actions were obtained, such as the emotion-tone pattern, the gender mixing pattern, and the modification of action and behavioral obscenities, and the non-response pattern to insults and humiliation, reflecting the status of a Back-Stage community.

Intrapersonal communication is one of the main levels of communication whereby a person is both the sender and the recipient of the message. In the present study, the purpose of understanding the intrapersonal communication between the views of two scholars in this field, Dona Vocate and Feyz Kashani, is what the intrapersonal communication in Dona Vocate as a Western thinker in the field of communication and Feyz Kashani as an Islamic scholar of personal ethics. What are the similarities and differences in their views have been examined. The present study was carried out in the data collection stage by documentary or library method and in the review، interpretation and analysis phase the comparative method were used. The findings of this study show that in Vocate's theory the principle is not to speak of intentional and conscious introspective communication of self or of the soul itself, but of intra-individual communication to achieve a better personality and to make subsequent decisions or decisions about them. In Feyz Kashani's thought, however, the Intrapersonal communication implies one's ability to defeat one's self to improve one's personality. In the present study it has been concluded that the fundamental difference between "intrapersonal communication" with Vocate and Feyz Kashani is in their type of view. So that the former considers "intrapersonal communication" in the context of the individual-society and the latter in the context of God-individual-society.

National branding, has become one of the necessities facing countries in the age of globalization. Meanwhile, the international media, relying on their high influence, have a key role in constructing positive or negative meanings in the minds of their audiences and therefore Any representation provided by them will have a direct impact on strengthening or weakening the national brand of countries at the international level. The present research aims to determine the representation of the national brand of Iran in the Associated Press photos, which was done by deep content analysis of 16,994 photos by purposive sampling method and the data were categorized by reverse coding technique by software MRP. The results of the study show a very political and completely negative brand of the "government" dimension of Iran, as warmonger religious fundamentalists, sponsors of terrorism and inefficient, who violate the civil rights of citizens through censorship and banning the media, arresting and imprisoning political and civil activists and impose strict religious frameworks. However, in the period before the victory of the Islamic Revolution of Iran, a completely different representation of a modern aristocratic dictatorship with constructive and effective international interactions to strengthen world peace and security has been presented.

The article starts with this notion that in the near future the development of communication hardware and instruments will push humanity to a new phase of bringing religions face to face with each other. Then it is emphasized that each of the three major Abrahamic religions will be given an opportunity to know about each other’s holy books without any mediators. Furthermore, this question is raised about the normative propositions of each of the prophets in the three scriptures, and the kind of existing similarities and differences. A conceptual definition of prophet and norm comes next and reasons have been offered to show that the notion of norm as described in the Holy Books is probably different from the one offered by sociology literature. Finally, to find answers to the questions, an eclectic research method for content analysis was adopted. Then with the help of a suitable software the normative propositions existing in The Old and New Testaments and the Quran were extracted and the research subject was categorized in 7 groups and the similarities and differences were explained as follows: 1- Dos and don’ts in our relation with the prophets in general 2- Dos and don’ts in our relation with Abraham 3- Dos and don’ts in our relation with Moses 4- Dos and don’ts in our relation with Jesus 5- Dos and don’ts in our relation with the Prophet Muhammad (p.b.u.h.) 6- Dos and don’ts in our relation with other prophets 7- Dos and don’ts in our view of the prophets’ miracles. At the end, with the help of Phi coefficient, the converging seven themes have been extracted and the resulting models have been presented.

The objective of the present paper is to offer an analysis of the persuasion techniques used in the Iranian government’s media campaign on “Opt-out from Subsidy Plan.”  The event took place in the first month of 1393SH (Iranian Calendar). The “Opt-out from Subsidy Plan” turned out to be one of the main government’s media campaigns.  The government introduced and launched it to motivate and encourage Iranian to withdraw their name from the list of beneficiaries, i.e., those who were receiving a monthly subsidy from the government. The campaign implemented in almost half month (16th to 31st) in early of year 1393SH and based on the statistic given by officials, only 3% of the people welcome the campaign and register their names to withdraw from the list of those who are receiving the monthly subsidy. The organizers of such campaign tried to encourage and motivate people to participate in the campaign. The role of media and the contents, however, was one of the main reasons to contribute to its failure as there was evidence that shows neither media fully supported and participated in the campaign, nor the organizer used and implemented as much effective media and persuasion techniques on the content as expected.  Had it been provided to attract people to follow the campaign objectives, the results may have been different. As such, the main question of this study was to address the role of media (in terms of direction) in the “Opt-out from subsidy plan” campaign and also to offer an analysis of the most persuasion techniques used by the organizer (government) so to attract as many people to participate in this campaign as possible. The results of this study will help the organizer, i.e., the Iranian government, to do a better job in designing and creating campaign messages, that is using more persuasive techniques as well as assigning more efficient communicator in its future campaigns. Here, we used persuasion theory and persuasion techniques as the principal and conceptual framework. Persuasion Theory is a theory that deals with the elements of communication and their role in shaping and re-shaping the attitudes and behaviors of receivers. In this perspective, persuasive messages are thus able to activate an attitude change that can modify behaviors of the public in general. In communication discipline and to justify the persuasion elements, there are communication models which deal and elaborating the meaning, concept, and function of each element and the way they interact in each situation[1]. To be more specific, all the elements of the communication process including Source, Communicator, Context, Message, Medium, Noise, and feedback are involved and playing a role in shaping and re-shaping public attitude. Each of these elements along with persuasive techniques can increase or decrease the efficiency of the media content. Also worthy of highlighting that, techniques like “fear,” “Authority,” “Pinpointing the enemy,” “Name calling,” “Glittering generalities,” “commitment and consistency,” “Social proof” etc. are among the most persuasive techniques used in almost all types of campaign. The method of study was qualitative (Them analysis) and quantitative content analysis. Quantitative content analysis is a popular method among communication researchers who are investigating media contents. Krippendorff (1980) defined content analysis as a research technique for making replicable and valid inferences from data to their context[2]. In this study, the researcher also approached the qualitative content analysis named “theme analysis.” Theme analyzing as a qualitative technique is defined as a method for the subjective interpretation of the content of text data through the systematic classification process of coding and identifying themes or patterns[3]. Altogether, we chose some 412 programs/news from one TV channels (TV1) and three mainstream dailies named “Kaihan,” “Iran” and “Etemad” to constitute the unit of analysis of the study.   We selected some 196 programs/news randomly as samples on which we performed data collection and data analysis. Based on the objectives of the study, the research instrument (Coding protocol) was developed by the researcher. The research instrument was tested - retested for reliability using Scott's pi (range between 0 - 1). All cases and after a few amendments, the result of Scott’s pi was 0.75 and above. For the validity of the research instrument, the researcher follows the content validity where more than five experts in the area of media and communication approved the codes and structure of the research protocol to achieved the research objectives and measuring the research questions. The result of the study shows that there was no consistency among media content toward this campaign overall. While 80.8% of the content in TV1 and 75.5% of the content of “Iran” newspaper was positive toward the campaign, 54.5% of the content in “Keihan” was negative, and also 56.3% of the content in “Etemad” newspaper was neutral. The result of the Chi-Square test (X2 = 100.9, P= 0.05) shows that there is a significant difference between the media and their direction toward this campaign. In terms of the direction toward organizer of the campaign (Communicator), also media appear to be more neutral rather than be supportive. In overall, 64.3% of the content toward the government was neutral, 14.3% were negative, and only 21.4% were positive. Also, the statistic test was conducted, and the results show there were significant differences between media and their direction toward the organizer of the campaign (X2 = 72.7, P= 0.01). Also from the qualitative content analysis, some major negative “themes” were identified which could justify the failure of the whole Campaign. For Example, “Kaihan” and “Etemad” have had some negative publicity regarding the “Organizer” which at the end resulted in disrespectful between the people and organizer. While it was expected most persuasion techniques such as “Commitment and consistency,” “Social proof,” “Scarcity” and “Authority” appeared in the media content, the “fear” technique appeared to be mainly used especially at the early stages of the campaign. The most frequent used message carrying the element of “Fear” was “the possibility of a penalty for those who are not eligible to receive the monthly subsidy from the Government.” Even though from the middle of the campaign the organizer’s language has changed, and they tried to use more soft messages such as “denying the possibility of a penalty for recipients of the monthly subsidy” in approaching the people. Still, there was no confident “position” on what the government is going to do. In terms of using persuasive techniques, the result of the study shows that the capacity of these techniques has not been properly used. In addition to using inappropriate persuasive techniques, some messages have been produced and published against the principals of persuasion theories. The techniques like “Scarcity” or "Social proof” were used inappropriately where could not lead the organizer to the target objectives. Also, there was no certain standards or benchmark from the government on whom should register their name to be removed from the list of “subsidy list” and whom should remain on the list. On this basis, it can be highlighted that public perception of the whole plan was floating between force and persuasion.  

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.

This paper first reviews the status of computer games as a part of world’s contemporary teenagers’ lives in the cyberspace and then presents evidence on concerns over violence in these games. It then refers to a research conducted at Prague University in 2012 on teenagers of 13 to 14 years of age and explains that the researcher has concluded that some teenagers, interested in violent games, who play violent games for three hours or more per day, have been detached from the world around them, become more expecting and pretentious than others and lost the opportunities their coevals had enjoyed. In continuation, two theories regarding effects of viewing violence (in real world or cyberspace) which the Prague university has paid attention to would be expounded and then part of the quantitative findings of the Czech republic research have been compared with the findings of an experiment conducted using the same method on a similar number of Iranian teenagers. It has been shown in which cases the two experiments had come to completely similar results and in which cases they were different.

From among 51 Islamic countries whose majority of population are Muslims, 41 countries have the experience of being a colony in their history. Passing through the colonialization era has left behind a heritage that – although it can have similar and sometimes different characteristics, its effects on culture and communication of these societies more or less have enjoyed similar features. After explaining the concept of “social problems” in order to review the media problem in Tunisia, as the case under study, the paper reviews relationships between the two institutions of “sovereignty” and “media” at three junctures of colonialization era, post-colonialization era and the recent era known as “Arab Spring”. The paper shows that vertical and unilateral relations of governments with Tunisian media, during the colonialization era, have turned them into tools for achievement of colonializataion goals of the colonizers. After gaining independence, with respect to the existence of severe encounters of despotic governments, reinforcement of these vertical relationships never gave the media the chance to play a role in the development of the country.

Nowdays, a country is in dire need of entrepreneurial knowledge and skills more than ever. Families, educational systems and governments play a pivotal role in institutionalization of entrepreneurial culture. But the significance of the media, specifically the press, which greatly influence people's thoughts, attitudes and values, is undeniable. So the main objective of this research is to survey "the development of entrepreneurial culture in the press". In this study, 220 issues of the press with high circulation with a purposive sampling have been surveyed for the period of four years For the theoretical and practical parts of the study, documentary-based and in-depth content analysis methods have been used respectively. In data analysis, we have taken advantage of both descriptive and deductive statistical methods as well as MRP software. The findings show that the press do not pay any considerable attention to entrepreneurship. Most of the published issues are related to employment and entrepreneurial services while the components of a knowledge-based entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial opportunities and entrepreneurial attitudes have not yet found their statistical position in the press The activities made in this regard are sporadic and on an ad hoc basis and cultural organizations have not any role in reflecting entrepreneurial activities in economic journals and periodicals

In this paper, after defining social networks and indicating their differences with social groups, we focus on studying the historical evolutions of social networks in form of three eras or three generations. In the first generation that goes back to before invention of postal stamp, telegraph, and telephone, social networks in the whole world had more or less similar characteristics and included a very large number of small limited domain networks. Later on, the invention of communications technologies such as telephone and telegraph started to connect those small networks to form larger network with bigger domains. These technologies became popular very quickly in developed countries and led to the formation of the second generation of social networks. However, in developing countries, such as Iran, the use of those technologies was limited to only a very small group of the residents of the capital city, who were literate and wealthy, making them rather luxury devices. This paper shows that even after about one century since their invention, these technologies were not in a position in developing countries to create the same unified type large social networks as in developed countries. As a result, the structure and the application of the second generation social networks was different in the developed and developing countries. Next, we show that after the invention of the Internet and cellular phones, the third generation of social networks started to be formed in developed countries, with a similar trend but with some new dimensions. In Iran, although the Internet helped to create the so-called virtual social networks, but the usage of modern technologies in the Internet has still been mostly limited to the residents of the capital and big cities. Such usage is not even popular among all literature people in those big cities, rather only those people who have digital literacy. In contrary to the Internet, while there are still about ten thousand villages that don’t have post office or land telephone line, the use of cellular phone had an excessive grown in Iran.Based on the above observations, this paper concludes that the existing social networks in Iran in fact consist of three scattered sub-networks that include a minority of first generation social networks, a majority of the second generation social networks, and again a minority of third generation social networks. Interestingly, although the third generation social networks in Iran does not have the same type of infrastructure that is available in developing countries; it has had a chance to be connected to the virtual social networks in developing countries through the Internet, unlike the localized first and second Iranian generations of social networks. A clear example for such global connection was the use of the third generation social networks to largely send out the photos and videos of the 2009 protests to the rest of the global virtual social network across the world. In the end, the paper concludes that the co-existence of these three generations of social networks in Iran does not mean that they form a unified network. Therefore, it is important to study the software and hardware interactions both inside and cross these three social networks, when the communication researchers address the topic of social networks in Iran.

When regarding the extension and depth of modern studies on religion and the necessities for an inter-religious discourse, one would view precise scientific methods to be an inevitable instrument for comparative stuies of religions. Performed by using a combining method in quantitative and qualitatve content-analizing and as a part of an extensive research report, this paper has explained the meaning of negative sanctions or punishments and, then, the problem of the study, namely perceiving the differences and resemblances in the field on the texts of Old Testament, New Testament and Quran have been justified.

Basically speaking, saintliness is considered as a commented and valued issue allotting to religion realm which without the presence of such a meaning, no religion is worthy of its name.This article aims to consider the normative prepositions related to holy places and times in three sacred books: Quran, Pentateuch, and Gospel with their similarities and differences. A specific software program is used with quantitative and qualitative research method to process and analyze the data by means of a profound content analysis method.As a result of searching in these three sacred books, 10396 normative propositions were found which are categorized in 123 sections. One of these sections includes 295 prepositions with the content of holy places and the other one has 301 prepositions with the content of holy times.Therefore, 5.7 percent of the dos and donts of these three books presented in tables of this article is based on the norms of holy places and times. According to these tables, Pentateuch considers do's and donts in our relation and holy places as well as us and holy times more than the two other books. In a section of holy places, the share of normative prepositions related to us and sacred objects is more in Pentateuch rather than Quran and Gospel. However Gospel compared to the other books has more relevant norms related to places of worship like churches and synagogues. Additionally, the least normative propositions related to us and holy times could be found in Gospel. The normative prepositions related to religiously prohibited months are just seen in Quran.This article lists 596 normative propositions with their identity numbers by representing the exact address of the source of verses.Eventually, a symmetry model of fivefold contents of places and times norms in three sacred books is computed and designed. Factors to be taken in to accounts in this model are reaching to coefficient correlation of 0.7 between the contents of Eids and holy times with holy objects and places.

The production of this paper was motivated by the public distribution of the Multidisciplinary Research Package (MRP) software to the universities by the Ministry of Science, Research, and Technology of Islamic Republic of Iran. The MRP software is the result of a twenty-year effort by a group of the Iranian researchers. The Multidisciplinary Research Package allows what we call a novel Depth Content Analysis, also referred to as Mixed Methods, which works better than both Quantitative and Qualitative methods. In this regard, the paper starts with discussing the three (Quantitative, Qualitative, and Mixed) movements. Then, we explain the background, structure, and applications of the Mixed Analysis approach. Next, while reviewing some of the research projects and dissertations that have used Depth Content Analysis and Mixed Analysis capabilities in MRP, various examples are discussed in each case. Finally, we argue that Depth Content Analysis and MRP software are capable of providing user-friendly Representations, Stereotypes, finding "Central Points", using contingency models and analysis of the Phi correlation coefficient matrices.

The present article is to study the characteristics and general nature of audience and is described it as "Audience phantasm" in developing countries. It firstly notes that there will be consequences such as audience distancing themselves from local and official media if policy makers and media official's imaginations of audiences become far from related bare facts have happened in the era of global media and the nature of audiences. Knowing and analyzing the image of audiences presented in new communication theories. Accordingly, as the abovementioned authorities’ viewpoint of audiences exposed to media messages keeps distance from the true nature of media activities, media‐message receivers and their current position in the booming market of media, as termed by Mohsenyan Rad as “Message Bazaar”, there will possibly be disastrous social, cultural, political, and even economic consequences with regard to media uses.Then the history and definitions of “audience”, "uses & gratifications theory" and the concept of "Audience Phantasm" is described. After that, based on those and the increased options as well as the right of selecting of today-audience in the situation of message bazaar, as a result the characteristics of them are explained.

“Audience” is an old term inherited from the oral communications era that can be found even in Aristotle’s communications writings of 2300 years ago. Those were people who would gather in one place as the audience to listen a speech, talk, or a discussion. Later on and after the invention of media, the people beyond the media – including religious published books – were also referred to as audience. This paper focuses on different types of audiences, which could be referred to as “audience-in-text”. We study audience-in-text in Quran, Bible, and Torah and divide them into two groups: major and minor. So the main questions are: Who are the major and minor audience-in-text for the normative statements (including must and must not statements) in each of these three holy books and what are their similarities and differences? The results obtained based on a Mixed Quantitative, Qualitative Content Analysis- which is called Deep Content Analysis -indicates various similarities and differences. In brief, we can conclude that about 95 percent of the audience-in-text in Quran is three groups of prophets, ordinary people, and special groups and individuals. About 93 percent of the audience-in-text in Torah is two groups of prophets and Jewish people. Finally, about 92 percent of the audience-in-text in Bible is four groups of Christians, special groups and individuals, Apostles, and ordinary people.In the end, we will also compare the audience-in-text for six normative statement groups of “We and God”, “We and social interactions”, “We and personal actions and characteristics”, “Responsibilities and methods for orthodoxy”, “We and the holy books, Holy times and holy places”, and “We and holy people” among three mentioned holy books.