چکیده:
The appearance of different social media has been very influential in individuals’ life. The most common social networks are virtual social networks which have been fascinated by many users because of a lot of similarities with human society, and communications and interactions which are formed in it. This study investigates the role of membership and participation in virtual social network on cultural convergence. Manuel Castells and Giddens’s theories are applied as theoretical framework. This study is a survey study which was conducted through by distributing the questionnaires among FACENAMA virtual social network in Qom city. The sampling method was simple random and the sample size included group of 400 members. This study investigates the role of participation and membership in virtual social network on cultural convergence based on Sharing personal experiences, expressing opinions about up to date social issues, trivializing the genders of the members, virtual social networks, avoiding ethnocentrism, inattention to spatial and local position. The results show that there is a significant relationship between participation and membership in virtual social network and cultural convergence. The implications to both research and practice are provided in this paper.
خلاصه ماشینی:
Modern communicative-informative technologies has made the probability of the society’s appearance and a network in which people and societies have appeared in new frameworks, has changed our attitudes towards ourselves, others and even the world (Castles, 2001, p.
2. Review of Literature Navabakhsh, Zadshampour and Hashemnejad (2007) in an article named "Investigating the effects of internet and cellphone in changing the youths’ identity aged 15-29 years old in a city in Mazandaran" concluded that the space and time limitations have been removed by improving the modern informative and communicative technologies, so the individuals are not dependent to their local place, they are able to remove geographical boarders and communicate with a bigger world.
Hezarjeribi and Akbaritabar (2013) in an article named "A study about the effects of virtual social networks on the youths’ lifestyle and leisure time" states that the changes and evolutions in the technology and its global application and the appearance of information technology and communication, make changes in the way of spending time in individuals with different ages.
In a research conducted by Chu and Snider in 2013 named "Applying virtual social networks for selecting Canadian youth for participation in medical researches" they concluded that advertising through Facebook is a cheaper method in comparison with other similar approaches for attracting the responders to participate in the research which makes possible selecting the studied sample from among a wide range of people.