Measuring the capacity of archival documents of social communication in order to study social history  (experimental example: social transformation of Abadan)

Agharafii, Dawood

doi:10.22034/lrsi.2024.459994.1183

Measuring the capacity of archival documents of social communication in order to study social history (experimental example: social transformation of Abadan)

Document Type : Original Article

Author

Dawood Agharafii

Assistant Professor, National Library and Archives of Islamic Republic of Iran

10.22034/lrsi.2024.459994.1183

Abstract

Objective: The purpose of this article is to investigate the capacity of studying contemporary social history based on archival documents of social communication. The issue that is evaluated based on an obvious principle in this article is related to the concept of communication. Since the social life of a human gets its meaning in the interactions and communication with others, can it be said that the conceptual study and thematic analysis of issues related to social communication will lead to the unraveling of all the hidden aspects of social history? Therefore, the main premise of the article is a temporary answer to such a question. From this point of view, it seems that the study of documents related to social communication will, to some extent, lead to the understanding of the state of social history.
Methods: For this target, we tested the proposed hypothesis in a sample. Since Abadan was one of the pioneers of the social transformation of contemporary Iran due to industrial developments and the use of modern civilizational components, it creates an appropriate model for measuring the capacity of this research experiment, in the study of these developments and methodological extension to other places. In order to check the aforementioned hypothesis, first, common communication concepts were extracted from a number of international communication encyclopedias. In the next step, the number of 6128 archival documents related to the issues of Abadan city was obtained by searching in the "RASA" software of the National Library and Archives Organization through the "Abadan" descriptor, and through several stages, communication documents were purified and studied in parallel with the study of social history.
Results: The results showed that among the examined documents, 238 documents have standard communication content and are in accordance with international encyclopedias. In other words, the results obtained from the point of view of communication professors generally show that the study of archival documents of social communication is effective in clarifying more than half (54.71%) of the issues related to social history, which is the optimal capacity of archival documents with a communication theme for the study of social history.
Conclusions: despite the fact that the problem of society is equal to communication, these types of documents alone do not have the full capacity to analyze and measure social history. It can also be added that the issue of communication as a variable in the analysis of the state of social history has received less attention from researchers in related fields such as communication science, history, sociology, and interdisciplinary topics corresponding to the topic. Therefore, examining this issue in a methodological approach is a new thing. From a theoretical point of view, the use of archival documents as one of the reliable historical sources, within the framework of historicism and the Annales school, has a relatively strong support. This school's emphasis on micro-narratives that intersect with official narratives, as well as attention to the necessity of understanding the state of society in connection with other fields of study such as social sciences and the like, naturally adds to the validity of using archival documents. On the other hand, paying attention to the views of Benjamins and Knoblauch, who state that communication has the ability to include all domains of society's actions, or Habermas's philosophy-oriented views, which emphasize the praxis project such as communication action and the evolution of the human species from both social-historical and technological perspectives. has emphasized the importance of understanding communication in order to understand and identify aspects of social issues, including social history.

Keywords

Abadan

Archival documents

Historical methodology

Social communication

Social history

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Archival documents:

Sāzmān-e Asnād va Ketābḵāneh-e Mellī-ye Iran (SAKMA) 2300013513 (In Persian)

________________________________________________ 990034028 (In Persian)

________________________________________________ 2400014651(In Persian)

________________________________________________ 240002236 (In Persian)

________________________________________________ 2400015171 (In Persian)

________________________________________________ 240004005 (In Persian)

________________________________________________ 290002239 (In Persian)

________________________________________________ 29000444 (In Persian)