Abstract :
A large proportion of population around the globe is being informed by mass media. Television occupies a special status amongst the mass media, because of its potential to communicate to the sense organs i.e. eyes and ears simultaneously. Television which has become a part and parcel of our life today is greatly used for educating, informing and entertaining the masses. It helps to broaden not only the horizons of knowledge and understanding of the programme, but also approaches of rural development among the masses. Social advertisement is one of the approach being used by profit and non profit organizations for rural development. It is the design, implementation and control of programme seeking to increase the acceptability of the social ideas, cause or practices among the target group. In India, social advertising is used for social welfare theme such as swach bharat, vaccination, child health, family planning, primary health care etc. by government as well as others including various non-government organizations. Therefore, the present study was conducted with the objective to study the TV viewing behaviour of rural women for social advertisements on health and hygiene practices. The study was conducted in two districts i.e. Gurdaspur and Ludhiana of Punjab, India. Total 160 respondents from eight randomly selected villages from both the districts were randomly selected for data collection. The most frequently telecasted five social advertisements on Swach Bharat Abhiyan, use of ORS/Zinc during diarrhoea, pregnancy check up, immunization and breast feeding were selected randomly. An interview schedule was prepared to collect the data from the selected respondents. The findings revealed that majority of the respondents had medium to high level of exposure to mass media. Majority of the respondents had moderate (71.88%) level of TV viewing behaviour. It is suggested that all the organizations working for rural development must make use of this mass media i.e. television and must disseminate the message using social advertisements on television.
Keyword :
TV viewing behaviour, telecast, social advertisement, health, hygiene practices, rural women