ISPA poll results show: People want regulatory cyberspace

ISPA’s public relations reports, Iranian students polling agency in a national phone survey in February 2016 asked questions about social networks. Conducted with a sample of 1500 people, 72% urban respondents and 28% were living in rural areas; 50% male. All the participants in this survey were of 12 years old or older, and the average age of respondents was 38

As part of survey content used in social networks has been reviewed. In this regard members of social networks have been asked to describe the topic contents of the groups or channels they join. With this question, the respondents could choose 3 options out of the existing choices. Accordingly, 35% of the respondents claimed to join groups or channels with more scientific issues. Family news with 32%, news and politic reviews 28%, jokes and humor 24%, cooking 16%, sports and music 14%, religious content 12%, market and sales 9% and sexual content with 2% are next. It is worth mentioning, about 67% of people listed jokes and humor as one of their 3 main topics online which has declined this year

Another question in this context asked members of Telegram what kind of content they forward, and could answer up to 3 options. 28.8% of users said to forward scientific content. 20.2% jokes, 13.9% news and politic reviews and 11% forward family news. 19.1% of users do not forward anything. Following the 2 pervious questions, telegram users who forward content were asked if they validate the content they forward. In this regard, 35.5% said to check precisely, 17.1% do normal amount of research and 39.6% do a little to validate the content they forward. 7.9% did not answer this question

As another part of this survey, respondents were asked about their opinion on social networks. 41% deemed these networks useful, 48% introduced them as harmful and 11% did not comment. Considering only the users of social networks, 54% evaluated them useful and 43% voted harmful

Government’s approach towards social networks has been one of the survey’s main topics. Accordingly, 62% of respondents claimed that social networks should be organized and supervised, about 12% said there is no need to manage this space and government should not interfere in it, and finally 12% believed that social networks should be blocked