Media use by Students in Punjab: Comparative Analysis by School Locale and Type

Today, the media has a lot of power and can influence how society is structured on a socio-cultural, religious, political, and economic level. One of life’s most essential amenities is media. Data was collected through interview schedule in twenty schools, 10 of them were government and 10 were private, from rural as well as urban locale of Punjab. From each school twenty students from 11^th and 12^th classes were selected making the total respondents 400 senior secondary students. Statistical tools like frequency, percentage, Mann-Whitney U-test and Kruskal-Wallis H-test were used to interpret the data in meaningful way. The difference of use of number of media for seeking information was significant between rural locale schools and among all the schools. The difference in the frequency of use of different media by the senior students was significant between rural schools and among all schools. The difference in distribution of respondents according to media exposure was significant between rural schools and among all schools.