مطالب

The importance of the historical study of the Russian and Ottoman neighborhood policy lies in the fact that, in addition to the importance of these two countries in geographical, social, cultural, political and economic dimensions, a large number of Iran's neighboring countries were somehow under the control of these two empires before independence. In this research, the historical process of Iran's relations with these two important neighboring countries has been studied using the descriptive method and discourse analysis of Lacla and Moufe with the approach of historical institutionalism. The results show that during the lifetime of the Ottoman Empire until the disintegration of this empire, coinciding with the Safavid to Qajar governments, we witness two neighboring discourses. The discourse of the first period, the discourse of structural divergence, later with the change of political, economic and social geography and the requirements of the world system, this discourse turns into the discourse of minimal convergence. The discourse of "structural divergence" was formed on the centrality of the neighborhood policy based on the tyranny of the kingdom. The discourse signs of structural divergence included geographical dominance, expansion of religious ideology, political divergence, economic divergence, and world trade. The minimal convergence discourse is based on the centrality of the political signifier based on the court's understanding of global realities. The semantic system of this discourse is based on the main signs of acknowledging the existence of the neighboring country, the unbalanced weight of different aspects of the relations between the two countries, and the continuation of divergence alongside convergence. However, in comparison, the central sign of the discourse of the neighborhood with Russia is tsarist imprudence and court tyranny, and the main signs are passivity against Russia's expansionism, "military weakness in exercising territorial sovereignty, weakness in attracting the Iranian peoples of Central Asia and the Caucasus, and giving in to disgraceful agreements." they give. With the formation of the Soviet Union and the beginning of a new discourse, Russian expansionism in Iran in its territorial form ended and the chapter of ideological confrontations between communism and capitalism began. The discourse of Iran's neighborhood policy with the Ottomans and Russia is like two pieces of a puzzle that are both complementary and effective on each other's growth. If Iran's neighborhood policy regarding Russia and Ottomans had the same importance for Iran's ruling body, it is possible that a different historical path would have been established for the region and Iran.

The 2020 US presidential election was held indirectly through the Electoral College with the rivalry between Trump and Biden from both the Republican and Democratic parties, and as a result, many American crises emerged, indicating a shift in the position of soft power. Soft power means convincing others to achieve the desired result through persuasion, which was invented by Joseph Nye. The soft power of the United States has led to a loss of its international appeal by taking a hard line on soft issues, such as ignoring public diplomacy. The question is, to what extent has the 2020 election affected America's soft power position? The emergence of crises, such as inefficiency in internal management, Trump's rejection of the election results, has led to the decline of America's soft power position in the world. Given this approach to the 2020 elections, this study seeks to examine the challenges posed by many analysts, both in the debate and after the election, through a descriptive-interpretive discourse analysis method. And explain how it has degraded America's soft power position and been able to have a direct impact on its future and global policies, such as the possibility of a power shift paradigm in the international arena. It also suggests that Iran can turn threats into opportunities with constructive policies, despite maximum US pressure.

The pseudo-events -events that are created through and for the media- are one of the main opportunities to increase the visibility of micro-celebrities and to grow and maintain their audiences. This study aims to find what happens behind the scenes of pseudo-events that micro-celebrities organize. The primary purpose of this article is to study pseudo-events on social media accounts of Iranian female micro-celebrities on Instagram. Therefore, we aim to answer the following questions: What are pseudo-events on Instagram and what are their characteristics? How do Iranian female micro-celebrities create these pseudo-events? And What are the motivations behind creating these events and the way they are held? The methodology of this research is online ethnography and to answer the questions, we conducted unstructured interviews with 16 micro-celebrities and informants on micro-celebrities’ personal lives. Then, raw data were analyzed using the content analysis method. Based on the analysis, the central theme was fake events whose characteristics are: 1. participants (present and absent), 2. time (event occurrence time, event receipt time), 3. location (in real space, on virtual space), 4. etiquettes and form of performance (type of gifts, music, food, and the well-staged nature of events). The findings also showed that in these events, the represented image is more important than the event itself. In fact, these events are designed and performed for filming and display.