Mass Media Exposure And Utilisation Of Contents By Teachers In Akwa Ibom State Nigeria
Abstract
The study surveyed 438 secondary school teachers in Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria to ascertain their utilization of mass media contents. The study became necessary following assumptions that secondary school teachers may not have the financial resources to expose themselves regularly to the media and utilize their contents for self- improvement and enrichment of their teaching subjects. The principal tool of the study was the questionnaire which was administered to 438 respondents selected through a multi-stage cluster sampling procedure from a population of 87 52 teachers in public secondary schools in Akwa Ibom State. The study revealed that while exposure to the mass media was high among the teachers surveyed, utilization of mass media contents for self-improvement and enrichment of teaching areas of interest was generally low. Most of the respondents did not see any link between the contents of the mass media they regularly expose themselves to and the relevance of such contents to their teaching subjects. Therefore the study recommends that the mass media contents producers should develop contents to meet the needs of teachers in their professional career. This finding is indeed significant because mass media use researchers usually agree that people who are higher in the education attainment ladder, more often, have high appetite for informational programmes, because they tend to use the contents for self-improvement and for conversational currency. This study shows that this may not be the case all the time with some audiences.
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