Study of the role of weblogs in development of sociopolitical awareness of the postgraduate students of communication sciences

This research aims to "study the role of weblogs in development of sociopolitical awareness of the postgraduate students of communication sciences. To investigate and collecting data, survey method and questionnaire have been employed respectively. After completing the questionnaires, the data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential tables in SPSS program. The statistical population of this research includes 140 postgraduate students of communication sciences admitted to universities in the academic year 2011-2012. Because of the low number of the members of the statistical population, census-sampling method has been applied, and after reducing those who were not available to participate in the research, 124 questionnaires were filled. According to the findings of the research, the most respondents spend less than one hour per day referring to weblogs so that they can read news, being informed of social and political events. Findings show that these respondents use the news of weblogs about 3 to 6 years, and are familiar with famous weblogs to some extent. The most respondents also know how to work with weblogs. For obtaining more and valid information about a celebrity or famous person, they refer to websites and social networks. They believe that although they have a broad access to the internet, they do not spent much time for reading weblogs. In their opinion, the filtering of websites has a role in their access to the internet. Most respondents have trust in the content of the weblogs in some extent, and they just rely to some extent on the news they obtained from the weblogs for quoting from such news. so they do not use the content of the weblogs for their decision-makings. they think that weblogs are not valid resources for collecting information about the details of events and news. Most respondents believe in weblogs’ content to some extent and so they wouldn't present to the others what they have gained from weblogs.  They believe that weblogs have play a role in their awareness about the most significant political events of their time, the most important political decisions   made in the contemporary era, political terms and concepts, political organizations, institutions, parties, prominent politicians, who played a decisive role in the contemporary political changes of the contemporary era. In addition, the political orientation of the media and their major proponents, the concepts of political development, political schools and models, the issues hidden behind political events, the ability to analyze political news and events properly, social damages and abnormalities, social changes, the conditions of the different social classes, as well as the social trends have no significant role in such awareness.