This paper considers how weblogs may be representative of a form of alternative and citizens’-based media. Alternative and citizens’-based media are often described in part as not-for-profit organizations and projects that can serve as sites of social, cultural, and political contestation and promote active civic participation and democratic practices in contrast to mainstream media. Textual analyses of two Iranian weblogs were conducted in order to determine how weblogs may be situated within the existing literature and area of alternative and citizens’ media. The study reveals that while on the one hand weblogs weaken traditional boundaries and dichotomies typically associated with mainstream and alternative media, they share similar traits with alternative and citizens’-based media and show signs of facilitating spaces where democratic and civic practices and activities can take shape.

This paper will investigate the mechanism of interactivity and formation of ideology in new media and multimedia systems while focusing on the example of computer games. This paper will also be answering questions such as: what academic areas the studies of computer games belong to? Why do these studies need to be dealt with within the academic disciplines? And, why do these studies need to be academically revised? If it is possible that we speak of "computer games studies" as a new field of studies, then is there a possibility for them to assume a methodological as well as a theoretical framework? Because it handles the task of representation, we consider computer games to be a medium. Players of computer games find ways of realizing ideas through the course of playing a computer game and through the choice of interactions with the game. The players also understand potential ideological significations that have been set up in the game. The hypothetical player set his or her choice of procedure in the limited possibility. This is because the choice of actions in a game has already been specified. In these conditions, neither we can separate narrative from procedure, nor representation from interaction, nor machine from human, nor content from technology. Due to the complexity and intermingling of these elements, we can provide an analysis of the computer games only when we reconsider the present communication and media theories and paradigms. This breakthrough of the traditional media theories will pave the way for production of a kind of research literature that will be able to indicate some meaningful aspects of this rapid expanding phenomenon. The writers of this article, by investigating various aspects of computer game, are going to discuss the epistemological area of this expanded medium. In the end, the writers, by a new theoretical synthesis will review some research regarding the above mentioned questions, and suggest a more practical method for the study of computer game than the traditional ones.

This paper explores the emergence of transnational public policy focused on the management of Islam and Muslim communities in the West. It looks at the contrasting position of Turkish immigrant communities in Australia and Europe and the way they have been positioned differently in national discourse on ‘integration’, cultural compatibility and political risk. While in Europe Turkish migrants have become connected to broader social, economic and cultural policy on Turkey’s membership of the European Union in Australia their relationship to the dominant society is defined more by historical ANZAC myths of secular nationalism than by their Islamic religious identity and difference. On the one hand this is a product of Australian nationalist dialogue around ANZAC and Gallipoli but on the other it is a consequence of the bureaucratic organization of Islam by the secular Turkish state and its management of overseas religious organizations. The paper also reflects on the way the homogenizing of transnational public policy on managing Islam and Muslims coming out of the EU often misrecognises the nature of Islam and Muslim communities in other countries.

This paper and its actual research began in 1384 Iranian Calendar (2005) and that time it was one of the first projects that considered internet and ethnography in Iran to be methodologically inter-related. Since we wanted to provide a base for similar studies in Iran, we chose a number of groups for our anthropological study, and we worked on the way these groups operated in virtual space. This line of research originated from the fact that internet as pervasive media has special characters that provide special situation in human communication and therefore provide a field for ethnographic research. We also kept in mind the fact that because global users also operate in the virtual space and create joint communities; therefore, socio-cultural processes must take place there. We have realized that people and groups go to the virtual for variety of purposes and that makes them to change to ethnographic subjects, suitable for our ethnographic observation. In this paper, five Iranian ethnic groups and their internet activities will be studied. We will examine their functions in internet from ethnographic view. One of important reasons we selected these groups is the importance of ethnographic issues in today’s world and especially in Iran. Iran has a number of ethnic groups whose inclusion and national unity are conditioned by political sustainability that depends of how these groups exercise their national identity in internet.

New communication system has been very influence on economical interaction in the world. Characteristics of to-day American consumption are transferring credit and media- information network that provide good choice and its purchase, simultaneously. Growth of consumerism is one of important characters of capitalism. Since growth of consumption will due to flourish production and financial circulation, capitalism that is based on developing free economy mechanisms, develops consumption to developing economical circulation. Consumption is a cultural topic and it provides many choice possibilities in American postmodern market but it doesn’t have growth opportunity in real economic framework. Accordingly, capitalism deals with this problem by giving credit to purchase that it is more than economic ability of citizen and society. This economic flourish improves financial ability and welfare of citizen and provides possibility to getting out of debt. This article shows how credit cart by expansion of information and communication mechanisms and systems, due to flourish of American economy and how consumerism and consumption society in America as an economic concept have changed to cultural-economic phenomenon.

This paper will examine the interesting subject of infotainment as a process that is used by global media network in order to produce and transfer ideology of neoliberalism across the globe. It must be further explained here that; since television and its news broadcasting formats use images while broadcasting, their message can go beyond the limits posed by languages and national borders of other cultures and thereby create and bring upon other nations with the new worldviews on globalization and neoliberal life styles. This new format of broadcasting news in the form of infotainment appeared for the first time in the 1990s. United States media were the forefront of this type of news style. Expansion and development of infotainment has caused an unprecedented globalization of ideology of neo-liberalism. This paper will analyze the emergence of the phenomenon of infotainment in news and will indicate what factors contributed to its ever-developing existence. The paper will also examine the relationship between global recession that began in 2008 and its backlash on the development process of ideology of neoliberalism that was assumed to contribute to further globalization.

This paper will examine the virtual behavior of internet users in cases such as virtual love. Gathering a 550 sample of the Iranian users, the present study shows that these perceptions of the Iranian users are far from the reality and virtual relations can leave negative consequences on the life of the person in the real world. The mysteriousness of the virtual relations evokes a curious sense in the user. What is the person whom I am communicating look like? How tall is he/she? How old is he/she? Is he/she from a different sex or just wants to take me into a clueless game? Currently more than a half of Internet users are living in Iran and research show that most of these users use this medium for the appeal of virtual relations. These types of love promoting efforts on the internet also seem to be less dangerous and everybody is tempted to experience these kinds of relations.

The information and communication new technologies have had more results for political, economic, social and cultural realms, whereas the technologies as: the printing press, railroad and telephone made enormous effects in the human life and changed our general opinion about the time and space, with their aids the goods, mankind and information is transmitted to any where of the world. The range of change in these technologies is more than before. The recent technological revolution that turn around the information has caused changes in the worth, power, economic growth, and so on. Today it is believed that the lack it is regarded as key factor in failures of developing countries and caused them to be uncompetitive in the world market, to have a continuity in economic poverty and to result in their socially and economically underdevelopment. It is also argued here that advantages of using these technologies are obvious for rural development of the developed and developing countries. As a result, these countries are rapidly using and equipping themselves to it. Due to the fact these technologies and structures are created to benefit development process and therefore is considered as new phenomenon, this paper tries to integrate the empirical studies to the theories of innovation diffusion and examine some hypotheses of these theories regarding ICT diffusion mechanisms.