Shifting from Personal Media to Mass, Interpersonal and Interactive Electronic Communication Media by the Farmers for Receiving Agricultural Information

The purpose of the investigation was to ascertain the trends of communication media use by the farmers in receiving agricultural information. The empirical data of this study was collected from 256 randomly selected farmers, out of 1025, under Birganj Upazila (sub-district) of Dinajpur district in Bangladesh during February to June 2008. In all 12 communication media were taken into consideration in the study. The communication media were classified into three categories such as (a) interpersonal communication media, e.g. neighbours and friends, input dealers, Sub-Assistant Agriculture Officer (SAAO), Agricultural Extension Officer (AEO), Upazila Agriculture Officer (UAO), Veterinary Surgeon (VS), and Upazila Fisheries Officer (UFO), (b) mass communication media, e.g. radio, television, newspaper and krishi katha (monthly agricultural magazine), and (c) interactive electronic media, i.e. mobile phone. The respondents were asked to indicate their extent of use the selected communication media in a four-point rating scale such high, moderate, low and none use of the media with the weightage of 3, 2, 1and 0 respectively. There were four dimensions of the use media such as (i) extent of contact with media (times per season), (ii) understanding of the information (expressed in %), (iii) interaction with other communication media on the received information (number/ season), and (iv) application of the received information from the media (expressed in %). Thus the media use score for each of the dimensions by the respondents could vary from 0 to 36, where o indicated none use of the media and 36 high use.

The findings revealed that the highest proportion of farmers used ‘neighbours and friends’ (91.4 %) in receiving agricultural information followed in descending rank order by ‘input dealers’ (89.1 %), ‘television’ (78.9 %), ‘Sub-Assistant Agriculture Officer’ ( 71.1 %), ‘mobile phone’ (69.9 %), ‘newspapers’ (49.2 %), ‘Vterinary Surgeon’ (39.5 %), ‘krishi katha’ (12.5 %), ‘radio’ (10.5 %), ‘Agriculture Extension Officer’ (10.2 %), ‘Upazila Agriculture Officer’ (6.2 %) and ‘Upazila Fisheries Officer’ (4.7 %).

A comparative analysis of the dimensions of the use of the interpersonal communication media (ICM), mass communication media (MCM) and interactive electronic communication media (IECM) was also computed. The findings demonstrated that the proportion of farmers under interactive electronic media were much more than that mass contact media and interpersonal communication media. This may be due to shifting from the traditional media by the farmers to interactive electronic communication media. The is obviously an advancement of the rural farmers towards their contact, understanding of the agricultural information, interaction with other communication media and finally application of the information they receive from the interactive electronic communication media.