Participatory designing and development of wall newspaper: an action research in Almora district of Uttarakhand
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Date
2008-06
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G.B. Pant University of Agriculture and Technology, Pantnagar - 263145 (Uttarakhand)
Abstract
Communication has been identified as a crucial catalyst in the rural development. The need for development communication is immense, since a large population, over six hundred million people, lives in rural areas and depend on agriculture and allied sectors. Communication plays an important role in developing the poor masses. In addition to traditional media, new forms of communication are growing which envisages new hope to support developmental activities. Though modern mass media has wide reach but high mass media exposure does not guarantee catering of basic information needs. Print media is declared as most-used medium for agricultural development purposes but it also does not cater the actual information needs at grassroot level. Therefore participatory communication approaches in general and rural wall newspaper in particular appears as an alternative for development. To analyse the effectiveness of participatory wall-newspaper as development mobilizer, this study was conducted with following objectives:
•To study socio-economic, personal and communication characteristics of respondents.
•To assess information needs of respondents.
•To design participatory wall newspaper based on their information needs.
•To seek people’s reactions about effectiveness of participatory wall newspaper.
The study was conducted in Kunelakhet village of Almora district. Two issues of participatory wall-newspaper were designed and developed at Kunelakhet according to the need and priority of the respondents. Total 75 respondents were selected for the study and their profile (Age, caste, type of family, education, socio-economic status, language known, areas of interest, mass media exposure) were studied. Their information needs were gathered and prioritized and accordingly the wall-newspapers were designed through participatory approach. The effectiveness was measured by scale, developed by Natraju 1995. After analyzing the personal and socioeconomic characteristics, it was found that maximum number of the respondents belonged to young age group (15-30 years), education level of respondents were mainly upto middle and intermediate, main occupation was farming, were mostly marginal farmers, living above poverty line. Maximum of respondents declared information about hybrid variety of coarse grain, earlier variety of coarse grains, wheat, paddy and gehet as most needed. Information about vegetable and fruit crop was also in their priority. Most of them also needed information about precaution during prenatal and post natal care and employment and self-employment avenues. Regarding the effectiveness of the wall-newspaper content components were near about satisfactory in the first issue whereas satisfactory in second issue. In format components the second issue of the wall-newspaper was perceived as satisfactory whereas the first issue was perceived as less satisfactory. Respondents gave the opinion that though articles were need based, designing and format were appropriate and language was easy to understand but attractiveness and illustration could have been improved to attract more readers. Respondents unanimously perceived the utility of wall-newspaper in mobilizing rural youth for self-growth and accepted it as an effective tool for increasing peoples’ participation for self development.
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