Hassan Bashir; Amir Reza Tamaddon; Amin Mirshekari Soleimani
Abstract
With the increasing use of new communication technologies, public opinion management tools have also undergone fundamental changes; both in terms of method and theoretical foundations, there have been developments in the field of public opinion management that double the need to review and develop the ...
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With the increasing use of new communication technologies, public opinion management tools have also undergone fundamental changes; both in terms of method and theoretical foundations, there have been developments in the field of public opinion management that double the need to review and develop the theoretical literature of the past. What is now being referred to as a new way of managing public opinion in recent years, and especially after the 2016 US election, is the issue of "social manipulation". The authors believe that Iran is one of the countries that is exposed to hostile social manipulation by regional and supra-regional powers due to its special communication position. To this end, with the framework of hostile social manipulation, the cyber actions of Saudi Arabia against the Islamic Republic of Iran have been studied. For the present study, more than 900,000 data related to Iran in Arabic were extracted by Twitter from the social network Twitter until 2021 & 2022 years; Then, using the network analysis method, the activity of Saudi users has been specially studied. The results of the study show that Saudi Arabia, with its hostile social manipulation techniques, especially by investing in cyber tools, seeks to discredit, destabilize, weaken, and sometimes promote specific groups and institutions that are important to the country's competitive power.
SeyedReza Naghibulsadat; Fatemeh Oudlajani
Abstract
The purpose of this study is to analyze the content and evaluation of the Twitter of the Iranian and US Foreign Ministers aimed at identifying the "media diplomacy structure of Iranian and American politicians on Twitter."Social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram have played a key role ...
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The purpose of this study is to analyze the content and evaluation of the Twitter of the Iranian and US Foreign Ministers aimed at identifying the "media diplomacy structure of Iranian and American politicians on Twitter."Social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram have played a key role in the political arena, complicating political relationships and gaining more prominence in media diplomacy. .In order to answer the research questions and achieve the desired goals, content analysis method with two categories and evaluation techniques was used. The statistical population of this study is the total number of tweets of Iranian and US Foreign Ministers on Twitter in 2016-2019. The unit of analysis in this study is the Twitter posts (tweets) of the Iranian and US foreign ministers.The results show that the media diplomacy of the two countries has different aspects. Through its media diplomacy, Iran has been trying to emphasize its commitment to international commitments such as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and on the other hand points to the non-fulfillment of US commitments.US media diplomacy is also against Iran. The United States is trying to portray Iran as one of the main proponents of terrorism and to make all of Iran's actions destabilizing the Middle East. It can be said that the United States is trying to represent Iran as a state sponsored by terrorism and destabilizing the Middle East through the efforts of its foreign ministers on Twitter.
SeyedehZahra Ojagh
Abstract
In 2017, the debate over approving the ban on the import of transgenic crops caused increased public debates on the disadvantages or benefits of agricultural biotechnology in Iran. This increased the importance of studying how media coverage and frame agricultural biotechnology news. In this study, the ...
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In 2017, the debate over approving the ban on the import of transgenic crops caused increased public debates on the disadvantages or benefits of agricultural biotechnology in Iran. This increased the importance of studying how media coverage and frame agricultural biotechnology news. In this study, the news of three top Iranian news agencies over a 13-year period has been analyzed. Entman’s method is used for doing frame analysis. A review of all the biotech news shows that most of them are related to medical biotechnology and only 4.12 percent of the news covers agricultural biotechnology. The number of news on agricultural biotechnology has also increased dramatically between 2015 and 2017. All three news agencies have a non-critical and positive judgment towards this technology and its potential. The four frames identified include “management of agricultural biotechnology”, “effects of agricultural biotechnology”, “seeking support of agricultural biotechnology” and “public understanding of agricultural biotechnology”.
Zahra Majdizadeا; Hamideh Molaei
Abstract
This study aims to investigate the voice of Iranian Diaspora in Cyberspace. In particular it seeks to explore their concerns regarding their home country, Iran and to explore their role and influence in the formation of Iran-related contents on Twitter. While the formation of Iranian Diaspora was before ...
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This study aims to investigate the voice of Iranian Diaspora in Cyberspace. In particular it seeks to explore their concerns regarding their home country, Iran and to explore their role and influence in the formation of Iran-related contents on Twitter. While the formation of Iranian Diaspora was before the rise of new Information and Communication Technologies, the rise of the aforementioned technological improvements have had an influential role to make their voice heard in offline and online spheres, in particular in Twitter. Having conducted content analysis, the results of the study showed that Iranian Diaspora play a key role in content creation in online sphere and in particular in Twitter. However, the results also indicated that there is a multi step flow of information in their online network given that their main hubs are only few Iranian Diasporia organizations that are established in the host countries. In addition, the results of analyzing 270 selected tweets from Iranian Diasporas indicates that 'criticizing the situation in Iran", "Covering the news regarding protest and propagating them" and "relatively neutral news and information" were the dominant themes and topics twitted –and re twitted _by them.
Hamid Abdollahyan; Hossein Kermani
Abstract
This paper examines how the networked publics on Twitter are taking shape in Iran. While Twitter's role in political events has increased, the systematic study on this issue has not grown as expected. Accordingly, considering the importance of Twitter in Iran as well as the role of networking publics ...
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This paper examines how the networked publics on Twitter are taking shape in Iran. While Twitter's role in political events has increased, the systematic study on this issue has not grown as expected. Accordingly, considering the importance of Twitter in Iran as well as the role of networking publics in Twitter, the first step in analyzing Twitter's role in politics in Iran is to identify and analyze the characteristics and structure of such network publics. The purpose of this research paper, therefore, is to identify and analyze the structure of networking publics on the Persian website. We collected the necessary data during the 25 days of the presidential election of 2017. To do such research, in addition to using the theoretical concept of the public, we have combined the methods of social network analysis and ethnographic content analysis. The modularity of clusters indicates that there are three main clusters in the retweet network as follows: 1- the reformists' cluster, 2- the fundamentalists' cluster, and 3- The immigrant cluster. To describe the features of these three, we identified active users of each one based on the PageRank index. The findings indicate that active users are often made up of journalists, the media, and ordinary citizens. There is also a significant gender gap in the network of publics. Most of the members' accounts of these publics remained active after the election, but the members of these three network publics are different from each other in terms of their true identity..
Mohammad Rezaei; Maryam Pooraskari
Abstract
This study tries to examine the relations between using Facebook and people’s voting behavior in Iran’s presidential election in 2013. Taking a qualitative approach, we used virtual ethnography and observation techniques, as well as in-depth interviews to gather the research data and we used ...
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This study tries to examine the relations between using Facebook and people’s voting behavior in Iran’s presidential election in 2013. Taking a qualitative approach, we used virtual ethnography and observation techniques, as well as in-depth interviews to gather the research data and we used thematic analysis to analyze to gathered data. The results show that for a number of reasons, Facebook played a role in changing people’s minds from not attending the election to taking part in it. The election was the first after the disputed presidential election in 2009 and some people considered voting a taboo. Lack of dialogue and political discussion in Iran’s political and media environment outside Facebook, improved the website’s role. Another reason was the fact that Facebook provided an alternative to the state media. We argue that analyzing the effects of specific social media is only possible if one looks into the country’s political environment and the role of the social media websites in the society. The results show that political arguments may result in increasing people’s level of political information or motivation, but don’t necessarily change their voting behavior.
Mohammad Hossein Panahi; Hossein Panahi
Abstract
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 ...
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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 KhajehNasirUniversity 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.
