Effective role of Newspapers in Health and Environment Communication in Himalayan Terrain A case study of six newspapers published from Uttarakhand

Abstract

Environment and Health being the key factors for the survival of all living beings, it becomes imperative to study the role of mass media in this respect. It is well known fact that man’s need for communication is as strong and as basic as his need to eat, sleep and love. Communication involves interaction with our environments as physical, biological and social. Deprived of this interaction we would not be aware of whether we are safe or in danger. Actually science communication is the key to the real treasure of the scientific knowledge, by virtue of which scientific knowledge and concepts could be carried to the common man. Thus the common man is benefited with the new advancements in science and technology is able to fight against hunger, drought, diseases, and social evils, like superstitions, etc., with self-confidence, courage and faith. So the communicating environment and health issues through mass media have greater impact on its user because it provides us with valuable information regarding our well beings. Keeping these objectives in mind a study was conducted on the role of print media in environment and health communication. For this purpose six most circulated newspapers published from Uttarakhand were selected for the study. Amar Ujala, Dainik Jagran, Hindustan and


Rashtriya Sahara were selected in Hindi newspapers category while The Pioneer and Garhwal Post were selected in English newspaper’s category. For the content analysis, all the newspapers viz Amar Ujala, Dainik Jagran, Hindustan and Rashtriya Sahara, The Pioneer and Garhwal Post were measured in square centimeter (sqcm). First of all total print area of the newspaper was measured from which total advertisement area was subtracted in order to find out actual news printed area. This way, the total News Coverage Area (Total Print Area- Total Advertisement Area) was separated. In the next step from the total news coverage area, Environment, Health and other science related coverage items were again measured in sqcm. And finally the percentage area of Environment and Health coverage was calculated from each newspaper.