AWARENESS AND USE OF MASS MEDIA BY WOMEN GRAMA PANCHAYAT MEMBERS: A STUDY OF BIJAPUR DISTRICT

The present paper explores and examines the information needs and gathering habits of the women grama Panchayat members of Bijapur district. The study identifies the information needs and channels of information and their gathering habits of information. The study reveals that majority of the women Grama Panchayat members belongs to Bijapur district and they belongs to the age group of 31-45years. Further, the majority of women grama Panchayat members hails from OBC category and they are illiterate and a majority of them are married and all of them know the Kannada language. Since, Majority of the women grama Panchayat members are housewives they do not have any income. Women Grama Panchayat members gather information from Local newspaper and regional newspapers. Majority of the women's are the member of Grama Panchayat. Most of them are never used to listen radio. Among the TV channels, majority of them are frequently watching TV9 and Suvarna 24X7 and least preference are given for Aaj tak, Star Plus and DD1 because they don't know Hindi language. Finally, the study reveals that there is a strong association between the status of women grama Panchayat members and frequency of watching TV and reading the news- papers. The study reports that most of the respondents are very least, aware of the ICT and Internet literacy. It can be concluded that women Grama Panchayat members should get educated and they should expose to ICT environment to aware about the various welfare schemes of the government.