فصلنامه پژوهش های ارتباطی
پیاپی 67 (پاییز 1390)

As technological advances continue to affect communicative and electronic media, most of the academic discussions on politics and social participation have undergone changes, and such concepts as electronic democracy has become the core of the related research. The present study aims to examine the impacts of conventional and new media on people’s turn-out in general elections.The research methodology in this study is descriptive-analytical. Public turn-out in general elections has been examined in terms of both old and new media. The subjects in this research consisted of 175 officials in charge of holding general elections, including individuals from different political parties and groups, journalists, provincial governor-generals, governors and head of constituents related to various elections in Tehran province over last years. The findings show that such tools as SMS, Internet and satellite advertisement, electronic voting and survey, electronic policy-making and legislating raise public awareness towards the country’s developments, bringing about a rise in the nation’s political understanding and paving the way for citizens’ utmost participation in elections.

The present article, studies the way “family” is represented in TV commercials. Through a qualitative study, the article tries to examine semiotic constructs playing role in shaping the concept and meaning of family in TV commercials. The study of commercials broadcast on TV Channel Three in 1388 winter (Iranian calendar) indicates that there are disparities between values emphasized in official discourse and media representation of such values in TV ads. This contradiction shows that there are numerous meaning dynamics on the concept of family in Iran, highlighting the media focus on conflict between traditional and modern family. In the conflict between family and goods, it is goods that is represented as a new member of family and has imposes its related values on the family structure.

Media are fast and useful helps in political decision-making. Attempts to fit world public opinions with a country’s political objectives through media, highlights the significance of news and news channels. International news channels propaganda against Iran nuclear program could affect other countries’ foreign policies towards the Islamic republic. Given the numerous propaganda campaigns led by Arab and Western TV news channels against Islamic Republic of Iran’s nuclear activities, the present research studies the way Western channels such as BBC, CNN, FoxNews, France24, and Arabic language channels like Al-Jazeereh, Al-Arabiyeh cover stories related to Iran nuclear program. The findings show that Western news channels attempt to depict Iran nuclear program as a military one. This is the case with Arab channels with a less effect.

The present research, carried out through a survey, clarifies the relationship between the level and howness of audience new media consumption with the audience expectation from national television, given their personal, social-economic, religious and cultural characteristics. Some 832 young people from Tehran were selected using multistage cluster sampling and the research data were processed using the statistical methods such as Pearson correlation, analysis of variance and multiple regression. The findings show that the more educated and religious people are, the more their need to use television programs reduces and because of their high expectations of television, their needs are not satisfied fully. Thus, this group are less satisfied with the television programs compared to other groups. In addition, as the Internet use increases, their expectations of television decreases, i.e. their use of television programs to satisfy their need falls dramatically.

According to Giddens’ symbolic interaction theory and his structuration theory, identity is a constructed entity, subject to evaluation by individuals within a social context. Drawing on these theories and using a documentary methodology, the present article examines transformation of social identity in post-modern era (which is under the influence of media) and points out that in a context suffering lack of post-modern uncertainty, both the role and structure of media is subject to transformation, and principles related to social identity have changed. In this process, also, mass media have created some kind of fluid consumption identity through focusing on diversity and fragmentation of social styles. The article, finally, proposes a critical approach to media based on which media kill human flexibility and degrade him to a passive single-dimensional entity (consumer).

In the analysis of informational structure of linguistic units like the “sentence”, the offered information could be divided into two categories: new and old information. This makes sense when we look at the sentence or a linguistic message through a audience-like lens. In other words, in the sentence informational construct, it is the audience which matters and it is his mind that determines the recency of information. Drawing on theoretical concepts and frameworks, the present article examines strategies for offering new information in radio commercials, then it determines and analyzes the frequency of each in the sample body of text. Discussing linguistic functions and determining their frequency in radio commercials, it finally clarifies the relationship between these role functions and “persuasion” and examines linguistic strategies for persuading and convincing audience to buy a goods or service.

Applying linguistic concepts and speech communication principles, this article aims to study the problems existing in the language of television presenters at different linguistic levels using a descriptive-analytical methodology. In fact, the purpose of this writing is to examine the current state of the language standardized for television discourses and the extent to which TV presenters observe rules and regulations governing this language. To this aim, the article first introduces the standardized language, its functions and various levels of standard language and its variants. It, then, studies the principles and concepts of speech communication and discourse analysis, and linguistic skills for getting ready for and finishing a conversation. It, finally, mentions a few examples of television presenters’ language problems at different levels and put forward several strategies for tackling them.