Sociological Explanation of the Relationship Between the Socio-Economic Status of Iranian Citizens and Book Consumption

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 Department of Research Center for Culture, Art and Communication.Tehran.Iran.

2 Department of Educational Science, Yadegar Imam Khomeini (RAH) share Rey branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

Objective: This research aimed to investigate the relationship between the socio-economic status of Iranian citizens and book consumption to determine whether there is a knowledge gap among Iranian citizens or not.
Methods: The data was collected in a survey method. Information about Iranian citizens has been collected through a structured questionnaire in the form of face-to-face interviews. The statistical population of this research includes all people over 15 years of age living in the city and villages of the country. In this survey, a two-stage sampling was used. The number of samples in this survey is 15,606 people in 31 provinces of the country. The socio-economic status of the citizens was divided into three groups: education level, occupational status, and economic status.
Results: Based on the chi-square test and analysis of variance, each of the mentioned groups has a positive and significant relationship with book consumption. Thus, with the increase in the level of education, job status and economic status, book reading among Iranian citizens is on the rise. In addition, with the increase in education level, job status and economic status, people buy more books.
Conclusion: There is a relationship between the economic-social status of Iranian citizens and book consumption, and the more the economic-social status of Iranian citizens increases, the more book consumption increases and vice versa. These results show that there is an awareness gap among Iranian citizens and the research results support the hypotheses of the awareness gap theory.

Keywords

References

Beeghley, L. (2004). The Structure of Social Stratification in the United States. Boston: Pearson, Allyn & Bacon.
Bourdieu, P. (1993). Distinction. London: Routledge.
Bukodi, E. (2007). Social stratification and cultural consumption in Hungary: Book readership. Florence: European University Institute.
Chan, T. W. & Gold Trope, J. H. (2007). Social stratification and cultural consumption: The visual arts in England. Poetics, 35, 168-190. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.poetic.2007.05.002.
Chaney, D. (1997). Lifestyles. London: Routledge.
Chang, J. H., Kim, S. H. & Hoon Ma, D. (2018). The gap in scientific knowledge and role of science communication in South Korea. Public Understanding of Science, 27(5), 578-593. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963662516685487.
Dahrendorf, R. (1959). Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society. Stanford University Press.
Ghasemi, V., Vahida, F., Rabbani, R. & Zakeri, Z. (2010). The Effect of Social Class on Attitude towards Modernism in the City of Isfahan. Journal of Applied sociology, 21(1): 43-68. (In Persian).
Giddens, A. (1973). The Class Structure of the Advanced Societies. London: Harper & Row.
Gilbert, Dennis. (2002). The American Class Structure: In an Age of Growing Inequality.
Kia, A. (2016). Cyberspace and social class/ the role of social class on the use of blogs. News Sciences, 5(17), 28-42. (In Persian).
Marx, K.; Engels, F. (1848). The Communist Manifesto. Reprint by Tribeca Books,
McQuail, D. (2006). McQuailÌ› s Mass Communication Theory. Sage Publication.
Parkin, F. (1979). Marxism and Class Theory: A Bourgeois Critique. Columbia University Press.
Perry, D. K. (2002). Theory and research in mass communication: Contexts and consequences (2nd ed.). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers.
Pomeroy, S. B. (1999). Ancient Greece: A Political, Social, and Cultural History. New York: Oxford University Press.
Rostaii, S., Pourmohammadi, M. R., & Ranjbarnia, B. (2019). Identification and analysis of the effective factors of digital divide on sustainable development of Tabriz 2018. Journal of Geographical Survey of Space. 9(34): 1-16. (In Persian).
Shelton, J. (1997). As the Romans Did: A Sourcebook in Roman Social History. New York: Oxford University Press.
Stark, D. (1980). Class struggle and the transformation of the labor process. Theory And Society, 9(1), 89-130. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00158894
Thompson, W. & Hickey, J. (2005). Society in Focus. Boston: Pearson, Allyn & Bacon.
Tichenor, P. J., Donohue, G. & Olien, C. (1970). Mass media flow and differential growth in knowledge. Public Opinion Quarterly, 34 159-170. https://doi.org/10.1086/267786
Vite, B. G. K. (2020). Relevance of the knowledge- gap hypothesis amidst emerging dynamics of international communication in the information age. Journal Of Research and Development Studies, 4(1), 1-7.
Academic Librarianship and Information Research
Volume 57, Issue 3
September 2023
Pages 1-16

Files

Share

How to cite

Statistics