Will Politics be Tweeted? New Media Use by Iranian Youth in 2011

A survey of 2,800 Iranian youths regarding their consumption of media and social media indicates that the Internet and state-run television are their primary source for news and information, followed by traditional media and personal connections. Twitter, long thought to be the catalyst of the post-election discontent in 2009, did not show up on the radar of news and information sources. The survey was conducted in 2011 by the Annenberg School for Communication’s Center for Global Communication Studies (CGCS) and is reported in the journal New Media & Society. The article “Will politics be tweeted? New media use by Iranian youth in 2011” by Magdalena Wojcieszak, Ph.D. (Gr ’09), IE University in Spain; and Briar Smith, associate director of CGCS, reported on efforts to determine what sources younger Iranians use for information, the extent to which they rely on new media (such as social media) for political exchanges, their experiences with online censorship, and political efficacy as related to new media. The uprisings in Iran following the 2009 contested elections and debate over new media’s potential to affect dissent was, in part, a backdrop to the research. The survey was conducted at a time when the “Arab Spring” was taking place, raising the question of whether new media can empower popular protests

Finding a Way - How Iranian Reach for News and Information

The Iran Media Program publishes its groundbreaking 2011-2012 report on media consumption in Iran: Finding a Way – How Iranians reach for news and information. The report was authored by Magdalena Wojcieszak, Briar Smith and Mahmood Enayat and encompasses the results of two surveys conducted over the past year: the first is a field-based, systematically recruited sample of Iranians in several major metropolitan areas which mirrored the demographics of the country. The second study is an online questionnaire among young, metropolitan, educated and technologically savvy Iranians, and was aimed at illustrating the extent to which these youth employ new media for political purposes over a year after the contested Iranian elections and during the Tunisia, Egypt and Libya uprisings. The report combines the two studies for a comprehensive look at media consumption in Iran. Both studies obtained information on what sources Iranians consider most important for news and information, what kinds of new and traditional media are used and for what purposes, and which new media are used to discuss various issues. The prevalence of Internet use, online activities, and speed of access was assessed, as was the use of and engagement with certain platforms such as blogs, Facebook and Twitter. The surveys also examined the use of circumvention tools as well as the extent to which Iranians think citizens can be empowered through the use of new media

Outside In: The Practices of Iranian Diaspora Journalists

The Iran Media Program (IMP) conducted a survey of Iranian journalists living and working outside Iran. The IMP’s aim was to examine more closely the role and relationship between Iranian reporters abroad and their international and domestic audiences, as well as to broaden our knowledge of the Iranian diaspora media culture. With this report, the IMP hopes to contribute new insights regarding the transnational dimensions of Iranian journalism, as well as how Iranian journalists working outside Iran view their roles within and perspectives on the broader Iranian media ecosystem. The IMP’s research adds to a growing body of knowledge regarding the dynamics of Iran’s domestic media environment and news-consuming public

Facing Boundaries, Finding Freedom: An In-Depth Report on Iranian Journalists Working in Iran

Despite extensive documentation of and attention to direct state pressure on journalists and the almost continual reissuing of “red lines” as a pretense for these media-repressive tactics, little systematic research has been done about the field of journalism in Iran. Beyond direct state repression—harassment, arrests, imprisonment—Iranian journalists face a myriad of regulatory and bureaucratic controls that restrict editorial freedom and the flow of information between journalists and citizens. Yet we know little about how reporters in Iran contend with these challenges on an everyday basis, and in particular outside the context of tightened state controls and crackdowns on journalists during political elections. Hence, there is a need to look “beyond the prison cell” and to examine more closely the everyday operating conditions in which Iranian journalists work, as well as their professional ethics and standards, in order to illustrate a fuller picture of the dynamics of Iran’s media culture. With this report, the Annenberg School for Communication’s Iran Media Program offers—to our knowledge—the first systematic evidence of the working environment of Iranian journalists. It addresses a critical information and research gap regarding the reporting practices of Iranian journalists, their perceptions of editorial freedoms, their ideas of what the media’s role is in society, and the ways in which reporters and editors contend with Internet filtering and censorship. The fundamental aim of this study is to generate a deeper understanding of how Iranian journalists operate both within and despite an environment of heavy state oversight and restrictions, as well as to broaden our perspective of the complexities of media censorship in Iran

Tracking a Year of Polarized Twitter Discourse on Abortion

Abortion is one of the most contentious issues in American politics. The Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization ruling in 2022, which shifted the authority to regulate abortion from the federal government to the states, triggering intense protests and emotional debates across the nation. Yet, little is known about how online discourse about abortion rights fluctuated on social media platforms. This study analyzes a corpus of over 57M abortion-related tweets from January 2022 to January 2023 to show how emotions, hateful rhetoric, toxic speech, use of obscenities and insults, and also framing strategies fluctuated over the span of one year among liberal and conservative users. We offer three key findings. (1) Fluctuations in emotions were temporary; key events during the analyzed period did not bring about lasting shifts in expressed emotions. (2) We observe significant ideological differences in the use of hate speech: conservatives resorted to hateful rhetoric more than liberals. Yet, liberals were especially likely to use obscenities and insults, especially on the days the ruling was leaked and after the Dobbs decision. In turn, toxic language sharply increased among both groups following the leak and after the SCOTUS ruling. (3) Conservatives employ religious and fetal personhood frames, while liberals emphasize women's health and bodily autonomy, with each group reacting negatively to the other group's frames. Our results offer an in-depth insight into the dynamics of online discourse on one of the most contentious issues in contemporary America

Why are “others” so polarized? Perceived political polarization and media use in 10 countries.

This study tests the associations between news media use and perceived political polarization, conceptualized as citizens’ beliefs about partisan divides among major political parties. Relying on representative surveys in Canada, Colombia, Greece, India, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Norway, United Kingdom and United States, we test whether perceived polarization is related to the use of television news, newspaper, radio news, and online news media. Data show that online news consumption is systematically and consistently related to perceived polarization, but not to attitude polarization, understood as individual attitude extremity. In contrast, the relationships between traditional media use and perceived and attitude polarization is mostly country dependent. An explanation of these findings based on exemplification is proposed and tested in an experimental design

Security theory and practice: Energy security and environmental/climate protection in the second decade of the 21st century: Development trends

ZE WSTĘPU: W niniejszym tomie podjęte zostały aktualne zagadnienia związane z wybranymi aspektami bezpieczeństwa ekologicznego (w ujęciu przedmiotowym i narodowym), jak również implikacjami powiązania kwestii ochrony środowiska i klimatu z rozwojem społeczno-ekonomicznym oraz polityką i bezpieczeństwem energetycznym

‘Don’t talk to me’: effects of ideologically homogeneous online groups and politically dissimilar offline ties on extremism

This study analyzes cross-sectional data obtained from respondents in neo-Nazi online discussion forums and textual data from postings to these forums. It assesses the impact of participation in radical and homogeneous online groups on opinion extremism and probes whether this impact depends on political dissimilarity of strong and weak offline ties. Specifically, does dissimilarity attenuate (as deliberative theorists hope) or rather exacerbate (as research on biased processing predicts) extreme opinions? As expected, extremism increases with increased online participation, likely due to the informational and normative influences operating within online groups. Supporting the deliberative and biased processing models, both like-minded and dissimilar social ties offline exacerbate extremism. Consistent with the biased processing model, dissimilar offline ties exacerbate the effects of online groups. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed