- Title: Examining how Tehran teenagers benefit from using religious content in traditional and modern media
- Student: Mehdi Shvandi
- Supervisor: Dr. Nasser Bahonar
- University: Soore University of Higher Education
- Degree: Master’s
- Major: Propaganda and Cultural Communication
- Defense Date: 2010
Abstract:
In the continuation of the twenty-first century and in conditions where the communications industry, which includes a set of mass communication tools and factors with trans-spatial, trans-temporal, and transnational features, is expanding day by day in the course of communication and information development, outlining a model for the interaction of traditional and modern media in propagating religious messages while preserving their indigenous considerations seems necessary. This matter in a society like Iran, where traditional oral and face-to-face communications have been dominant and still enjoy high legitimacy and prevalence in the field of social communications today, faces more specific considerations. Despite the fact that in our country there are many experiences in producing religious programs and also utilizing the capabilities of new media, and a large number of professional communicators in various communication-cultural organizations and institutions are engaged in this important task, and various capital resources in terms of time, finance, and human resources are spent on this path, the type of planning in modern media and their performance, their lack of convergence with traditional media in religious propaganda, and the shortage of studies and poverty of scientific literature on the subject in the country are among the concerns that can turn the aforementioned cases into a context for reducing the effectiveness and in some cases the reverse effect of these activities.
The results of the field research conducted by the author regarding the investigation of how Tehran teenagers use religious content from traditional and modern media, which is the result of conducting focus groups in seven high schools in different districts of Tehran, indicate that traditional and modern media lack the necessary convergence and coordination regarding the dissemination of religious messages for teenagers. Teenagers have well perceived this inconsistency in cases such as the lack of training, enhancement, and updating of the communication skills of traditional media communicators (especially schools and mosques) in establishing effective and complete communication, the lack of friendly and complete communication by traditional institutions and media with teenagers in expressing religious issues appropriate to teenage years and expressing these issues incompletely by new media, the rapid entry of new media into the country and the lack of cultural policymaking for their proper use, and the failure of the government to take the lead in organizing and promoting the indigenized culture of new media.