The survey of the use of different types of media and its relationship with the voting criteria among the participants of the Iranian presidential election in 2017

Subject Areas : Journal of Cultural Management

zahra  majdizade ¹ (Master of Science in Comunication Science, Tehran University, Iran, (Corresponding Author): [e-mail])

Received: 2018-01-27 Accepted : 2018-03-05 Published : 2018-04-21

Keywords: Television, electoral candidates, media, Social Networking, voting behavior,

Abstract :

The present study compares the role of three different types of media: TV, newspapers and social media in the Iranian presidential election (May, 2017) in Iran. For this purpose, in the first place the rate of various media usage for gaining information on electoral candidates has been considered, and then the effect of each media on the formation of voter's selection criteria has been examined. The research methodology was to send an online questionnaire to a broad number of students from Sharif University of Technology (SUT) and University of Tehran (UT) who participated in the 12th presidential election. A number of these individuals (213 students) were randomly selected to participate in this research. The analysis of the findings suggests that participants have greatly followed electoral television programs besides social networking contents. Also, social networks have had a greater impact on the participants' political awareness and they were the main sources of information for people about the presidential election candidates. Accordingly, with increasing levels of education, individuals tend to use interactive and knowledge-based media. But there is no meaningful relationship between the type of media and voter's choice criteria.