Sociology
M.H. SayahTaheri
Abstract
The main view of thinkers, with respect to the impact of cyberspace on religion, is that its continuous use would help lead to “secularization” of individuals and society. However, it seems that this process, under the influence of some interfering factors, has overturned and, in some cases, ...
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The main view of thinkers, with respect to the impact of cyberspace on religion, is that its continuous use would help lead to “secularization” of individuals and society. However, it seems that this process, under the influence of some interfering factors, has overturned and, in some cases, even strengthened the religious outlook of some users of the virtual space, a process which we call “desecularization”. In this article, the attempt is being made to examine what are the most critical factors that enhance desecularization in social networks, and how desecularized users resist those secularizing effects? This research has been done using a qualitative approach and based on grounded theory as well as the theoretical sampling method. The statistical population was undergraduate students from universities of Tehran who were religious and each of them having about a thousand followers on Instagram. Finally, 27 of them were interviewed through structured questionnaire. MAXQDA20 software was used to encode and analyze the data which were deduced in three stages of sub-and-main concepts. The 10 categories that were selected include: pre-network context of the individual; scientific protective armor; transnational knowledge; activism power of users; religious lifestyle; reminding and meditating about life's priorities for users; maturity in interactions; internal and external care; intellectual patience and to build a social network with indigenous characteristics. All these aforementioned characteristics are gathered under one title called “conscious struggle”.
Social Sciences and Communications
S.R. Ameli; S.F. Siasirad
Abstract
The use of virtual networks, the globalization of mediated cultures, and the emergence of the cultural public sphere all have led to attention being focused on cultural citizenship theories in describing citizenship participation of cyberspace users. In this paper, using the method of ethnographic ...
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The use of virtual networks, the globalization of mediated cultures, and the emergence of the cultural public sphere all have led to attention being focused on cultural citizenship theories in describing citizenship participation of cyberspace users. In this paper, using the method of ethnographic content analysis, an attempt was made to evaluate the nature of citizenship practices of young Instagram users and the extent to which these engagement are consistent with their national citizenship. According to the findings, 69% of the content shared on the mainstream public pages, humor and entertainment pages encompassed "individualistic" themes, often in line with the users' individual interests and concerns and their tendency for happiness and fun. Moreover, these themes have complied with the cultures existing in the global public sphere rather than conforming to national citizenship. Yet, the more frequency of individualistic themes as compared to collectivist themes did not mean their complete disregard for national-scale actions, with 21% of the themes on these pages being formal and community-centered citizenship. Users have returned to their national-level belongings, responsibilities and issues through them. In the Concluding Section, the necessity of redefining the concept of citizenship based on the requirements of the cyberspace, the impossibility of adopting absolute positive or negative approaches to the consequences of virtual citizenship on national citizenship, the necessity of simultaneous attention to opportunities and threats this space poses, and the need to expand education pertinent to "cultural citizenship" were all emphasized.
Cultural Studies
M. Mehrban; E. Shahghasemi
Abstract
The world is experiencing a change at a rapid space with ever-increasing innovation and development in information and communications technologies. In fact, the modern world is controlled by the media, and many human relationships are driven by new technologies, especially social media which is growing ...
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The world is experiencing a change at a rapid space with ever-increasing innovation and development in information and communications technologies. In fact, the modern world is controlled by the media, and many human relationships are driven by new technologies, especially social media which is growing and spreading at lightning speed. This type of media, including Instagram has incurring more negative impact on children and adolescents. Therefore, it is important to pay more attention to media literacy, which is considered in this research. It should be noted that media literacy does not occur spontaneously but is possible through an appropriate educational system. As such, there is a need to present a coherent and purposeful model in the media space surrounded by all kinds of celebrities and all kinds of content on the Instagram. This research method is qualitative-exploratory in nature. With the help of experts, the researchers intend to provide a media literacy model for teenage girls addicted to the Instagram. The Delphi method was used while the study population was selected from experts and professors in the field of communication and media literacy. Finally, the desired model of media literacy was organized around five areas of cognitive, technological, educational, research and policy making.
M. Khelghati; H. Molaei
Abstract
This study aims to investigate the discourse about traditionalist women on a popular social media platform, i.e. Instagram. Therefore, ‘Tašt-e Šir’ video which was part of a television program about family values was selected as the case study. In this video, a family counselor, ...
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This study aims to investigate the discourse about traditionalist women on a popular social media platform, i.e. Instagram. Therefore, ‘Tašt-e Šir’ video which was part of a television program about family values was selected as the case study. In this video, a family counselor, advised women to express their love and affection to their husbands through washing their spouse’s feet in a tub of water or milk. The video became very controversial and was distributed vastly on different types of social media including Instagram. The main question of the paper is the discourse about women that are represented on this video. In addition, this study seeks to understand the reception of Instagram users from this discourse according to the Hall encoding-decoding theory. Critical discourse analysis based on the Fairclough model was conducted to answer the first question. A qualitative content analysis was used to answer the second question. The results of the study show ‘traditionalist women’ being the dominant discourse on the video. The results also show that ‘oppositional code' is the dominant reception among Instagram users.
Social Sciences and Communications
S. Koohestani; F. Alikhah; N. Ofoghi; H. Hallajzadeh
Abstract
With the emergence of new social media networks, the mechanisms of gaining fame have undergone massive transformations. Today, users have attained the opportunity to reach fame, which was not easily accessible before. In this regard, due to its easy-to-use capabilities and high popularity among users, ...
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With the emergence of new social media networks, the mechanisms of gaining fame have undergone massive transformations. Today, users have attained the opportunity to reach fame, which was not easily accessible before. In this regard, due to its easy-to-use capabilities and high popularity among users, Instagram has become a main platform for creating fame. Many Instagram users are inclined to become famous on this social network for various reasons, and this fame brings considerable consequences in the society, which enhances the importance of sociological analysis of the issue. By this way, the present paper tries to examine and analyze the causes and effects of fame on Instagram while reviewing the theories about economy, fame, and microcelebrity. The study was conducted with a qualitative approach and semi-structured in-depth interviews with 20 Instagram users. The findings obtained from the interviews were also extracted and analyzed with the thematic analysis technique and demonstrated 6 main themes and 12 sub-themes. Finally, based on the interviewees' responses, significant reasons for seeking fame on Instagram include monetizing and acquiring economic capital, a shortcut to success, and an opportunity to be seen and heard, which has led to important outcomes such as the standardization of taste, the consumerism of everyday life, and changing values and norms in the society.
Social Sciences and Communications
Z. Majdizade; A. Ravadrad
Abstract
Instagram texts need to be analyzed from a multimodal perspective because a large part of it on this social media platform is conveyed to the audience through images. The multimodal critical discourse analysis approach, like others, focuses on power and ideology concepts, as well as the context involved ...
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Instagram texts need to be analyzed from a multimodal perspective because a large part of it on this social media platform is conveyed to the audience through images. The multimodal critical discourse analysis approach, like others, focuses on power and ideology concepts, as well as the context involved in text production and at the same time, due to attention to multifacetedness and using the social semiotics approach, it is suitable for analyzing Instagram texts. The study of childhood, motherly and fatherly identity construction on child-centered Instagram pages was chosen as a case study. For this purpose, first the analytical framework of Kress and Leeuwen was explained with the focus on how to analyze each of the intellectual, interpersonal, and hybrid meta-roles. Then only the child-centered page of fraternity that is among the top-ranked Iranian Instagram influencer pages was analyzed using the same method. Findings were analyzed by separating texts as corpus. Following that, the discourses of patriarchy and capitalism were identified and their connection to social and industrial context was described. Findings also demonstrated the fluidity and simultaneity of identities influenced by the emergence of social media.
