ORAL PUBLIC COMMUNICATION IN THE IRANIAN IMMIGRANT COMMUNITY, TOWARD RECONCEPTUALIZATION OF MASS COMMUNICATION

The Iranian revolution of 1978-79 brought into focus the organized, systematic nature of a communication system in that Islamic nation which was referred to popularly as a "rumor mill" in the West.;A study was designed to discover how mass communication might be occurring on an overlay of social structure. Mass Media has been considered fairly synonymous with mass communication. An ethnographic study was undertaken of Iranian immigrants in the United States using the methods of participant observation and focused interviews. Eight societies and organizations including the major political organizations, social groups, professionals' society, and businessmen's societies were observed in Chicago in 1982-83. Fifty interviews were conducted with leaders and members of the organizations and with Iranians who were not part of the "organized" community. The interviews were conducted in Chicago and southern Michigan in 1982-83 and in Seattle in 1984.;The following information was sought: frequency of meetings, rules of news transmission and rules of verification in the receiving behavior, and sender/receiver roles in the community.;The data showed that members of organizations and those in the "unorganized" community were similar in their information-seeking and evaluative behavior. The major differences were in news interest and judgement of the process necessary to ferret out the "truth.".;Public communication, in particular networking between groups, has brought down the governments of Indonesia, Thailand, and Iran in the past 20 years. In the West, mass media audiences have fractured as media have become specialized. In view of these important occurrences in the East and West it is proposed that the concept of "mass communication" be changed to "media" and "public communication" be added to the contextual concepts of communication.;In addition to empirical evidence of a vast amount of communication overlaid on social structure without the intrusion of major technologies, a model is proposed which explains new components in the social nature of communication.