Information and Communication Technologies and the Changing Identities of Iranians in the 21st Century The distinctly different and seemingly disconnected private and public identities of many Iranians have been a prominent result of the imposition of strict Islamic rules of public conduct on the Iranian population. Now, with the global reach of the information and communication technologies (ICTs) such as the internet facilitating the emergence of virtual communities and cyber identities, the Iranians at home and abroad have had the opportunity to assume yet a new identity while traversing the global internet community. This paper is an attempt to empirically study the nature and the effects of the cyber networking communities in Iran; and to investigate the effects of newly-found online hybrid identities in shaping the views and outlooks of the Iranians. The extent to which such altered and newly-found identities help to accelerate the pace of social change in Iran is of particular concern in this study. The selected research methodologies for this study are survey research and participant observation.