Cyberspace and Postmodernization of the Medical Arena (Case Study: Music Therapy)

With the advent of postmodernism in medicine arena, new interpretations of the concepts of health and its approaches emerged. Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) is one of the treatment methods that is consistent with postmodernist interpretations. Due to the lack of different types of CAM, especially music therapy in universities and the lack of music therapy clinics in Iran's social space, cyberspace witnesses the emergence of sites and weblogs about music therapy. Given these limitations, the role of cyberspace in providing an opportunity for a discourse presence that has been marginalized should be considered. This possibility of presence in cyberspace under limited conditions of presence in the physical space is a reflection of postmodernization. Certainly, the actual space constraints affect the quality of the presence of music therapy in Iran's cyberspace. (So, the research questions are as follow: How music therapy is introduced in cyberspace? What dimensions are emphasized on cyberspace in the introduction of music therapy- as one of the types of complementary? How these dimensions are in contrast to modern medicine?

The research method in this study is qualitative content analysis. The target community of the research consists of the updated Iranian websites on music therapy. (Purposive) theoretical sampling was used for sampling and continued to reach the theoretical saturation. The analysis of the 11 sites showed that they emphasize on the seven major dimensions (categories) of music therapy to introduce it to the visitors, which are "scientific dimension", "historical dimension", " therapeutic function "," empowerment dimension "," health benefit"," application comprehensiveness "and" globalization of music therapy ". Meanwhile, music therapy by focusing on some dimensions seek to increase its credibility by bringing it closer to modern medicine and, in contrast, by emphasizing on some other dimensions, challenges modern medicine.