Due to the dysfunction of mainstream media in Iran after the advent of cyberspace, this article raises the question of whether a new paradigm has emerged in the field of media that has changed the requirements of media policy and planning? The premise of this study is that with the advent of cyberspace, a new paradigm has emerged in media policy-making that has affected all media, but instrumentalism is a veil to see.
Information and communication technology is the new infrastructure of human society. This infrastructure does not only have a technological aspect, but its paradigmatic aspect is more obvious, and it has caused the effects that the society has received from the new media technology to not only have technical dimensions, but these effects are more extensive in terms of biological philosophy.
The experience of recent years shows that most of the strategic plans of institutions and organizations in charge of media policy in Iran, especially in the field of virtual space, have failed in practice. The unsuccessful plan to replace the native platforms of social networks instead of foreign platforms is a clear example of this. The main cause of this failure is a purely technological view of the issue and neglect of the paradigm that governs and drives these media.
Therefore, the necessity of this review lies in the importance of understanding the philosophy of virtual space technology. Before proceeding to import the technology, the country importing the technology should determine the paradigm context within which this technology was created. What issues are you trying to solve with it? What are the changes it creates in the heart of the society? What aspects of technology can be accepted and adapted, and how much can it be controlled and modified, and how much does it create conflict in society?
The main question that this article pursues is that "virtual space has brought about paradigm changes in media planning and policy-making, and what are the effects of the new space on "media production" and "media distribution"?
In this research, three library methods, phenomenology and thematic analysis were used, and in-depth interviews were conducted with 25 active media experts in the two fields of mass communication and virtual space, who were selected by snowball sampling.
Among the theories that can guide the topic of discussion are the theories of "network society" by Manuel Castells, "participatory-democratic media" by McQuail, "alternative media" by Downing, and the theory of "the end of the social thing" from Alan Thorne that have been taken into consideration.
In the findings of the research, by extracting 64 themes of the paradigm governing the virtual space, it was shown how the communication space has faced the new media grammar.
The principles of the new media grammar are "overcoming the right-oriented over the task-oriented, going through the maximalist and absolutist media, multi-source media and de-publicizing the news, minimizing the media structure with the aim of agility and increasing the range and ending the domination of pyramid-shaped structures, changing the approaches of message management, the content and demand for change and response".
The results of the research tell us that virtual space is the result of the accumulation and historical continuity of the biological paradigm of the reformation and its intellectual branches, especially human-centered.
According to the results of this research, although virtual space and social networks cannot be considered a "paradigm case" and a complete model of communication technology, in many dimensions, media policy and planning are changing from one paradigm to another.
In response to the research questions, cyberspace phenomenology has changed the fields of media "production" and "distribution" and media policy and planning in many dimensions by reproducing the biological paradigm of the reformation.
The paradigmatic data governing the virtual space creates the awareness that this technology has a heavy philosophical obstacle and is the result of the accumulation and historical continuity of the biological paradigm of the Reformation and the resulting intellectual branches such as existentialism, humanism, secularism, liberalism and human rights ideas. and postmodern critics.
The school ruling the virtual space can be defined as the "Social Democratic Existentialist" identity combination; a technology based on "equality, freedom and human-centeredness". This technology is supposed to create a human being who is not a prisoner of any historical, political, social and religious determinism and does not have a predetermined nature.
The pluralism ruling the virtual space should not create the impression that the weight of ideology has been reduced in favor of technology. The human-centered idea that forms the basis of Western technology is a return to the humanistic thought of Protagoras who believed that "man is the measure of everything" and this idea was developed by "William Acham" and "Martin Luther" in the 14th and 16th centuries. It was reread and interpreted as "everyone is his own spiritual person" and its media expression in the virtual space can be projected as "everyone has his own media".