Media Literacy among the Student Community of Tribal Areas of Tea Estates of Darjeeling

The research paper focuses mainly on the media literacy among the student community of the tea estates of Darjeeling. They mainly belong to different local indigenous tribes like Gorkha, Lepcha, Khawas, Tamang, Sherpa, Khemka, Newar, Bhutia among many others. Darjeeling is famous for its tourist destination, but also it is known worldwide for its tea and tea gardens. The tea estates have its workers working on minimum wages, compared to other employment opportunities. This research paper mainly focus on the student community starting from secondary to post graduation level. It tries to assess their media literacy level of the old media forms like newspapers, television, radio and others. Also, it tries to fill the gap between the old and new media knowledge of these students. The research particularly focuses on the New Media aspect of online education system, and how the students respond to it. The enculturation of the student community of these tea estates with the other culture of East Asian countries like Korea, Japan and China, is analyzed. The research paper tries to address the existing gap in media literacy and New Media of the student community of our research, and guide them through this research so that they can learn and contribute to the society in the future as well.