An Investigation of the Uses and Gratifications Rural Youth Seek and Get from the Media: A Case of Selected Secondary Schools in Rongo Sub County
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Date
2016-06
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Daystar University, School of Human and Social Sciences
Abstract
This study investigated the uses and gratifications that the rural youth seek and get from the media. The purpose of the study was to establish the uses rural youth make of the media; to identify the gratifications rural youth seek and get from the media they use; and to find out the media that most meet them. The study used a population of 1209 youth with a purposive sample of 181 students from Form Three and Form Four. The youth who came from Kanga Boys’ National School were 596, Nyarach Mixed Day were 298 and Oyugi Ogango Girls’ Boarding Secondary School were 315. Pretesting of the questionnaire was done using three female and two male students from Kamagambo Adventist Secondary School. The data showed that the rural youth used mobile phone, television and social media to gratify communication, entertainment, surveillance, personal identity and boredom relief needs. The study established that more boarders than day scholars used media. The study further found that while there was no big difference of gender use of mobile phone and television among the rural youth, more males than females used social media to fulfill a variety of needs. It was also revealed that in sum, a substantial 78 % of the rural youth in Rongo admitted using social media to access decadent materials, of which 45.8% used internet, and 32.2% used their mobile phones to access the materials. The decadent materials- unacceptable media content which the rural youth watched included pornographic pictures. The concluding finding of this study is that mobile phone is the medium that meets most the needs of the rural youth. One of the key recommendations that the researcher gives is that, the rural youth need to spend much of their time using media for academic needs. The government may also improve on the rural electrification for better use of media among the rural youth.
Description
Master of Arts in Communication
Keywords
Rural Youth, Media, Secondary School, Rongo Sub-County
Citation
Oyaro, J. O., (2016). An Investigation of the Uses and Gratifications Rural Youth Seek and Get from the Media: A Case of Selected Secondary Schools in Rongo Sub County. Daystar University, School of Human and Social Sciences, Kenya.