A comparative study of reading preferences in newspapers among college going youths

Abstract

This study aims to delve into the psyche of young college students in Bhopal, and study their newspaper-reading patterns. Here, the word college has been used as an umbrella term to denote all educational institutes, colleges and universities. The study is divided into two parts, the reading preferences of girls and that of boys.One might argue that in this day and age of internet access, where information is available on the tip of the fingers, newspapers are losing their sheen. However, during the study, it was found that newspapers are still relevant among college-going youngsters. Notwithstanding which economic strata they belong to, college students form a big section of newspaper readers. Sports, economy, science, gadgets, fashion, lifestyle, national and international college-goers are interested in all sorts of news. This is corroborated by the fact that newspapers and magazines are increasingly coming up with youth-oriented supplements to cater to these young readers. For example: Dainik Bhaskar has City Bhaskar that contains college news, The Times of India s feature pull-out Bhopal Times targets young readers, DNA s After Hrs has youth-centric articles, Hindustan Times has HT City that features college news. There are more than hundred newspapers published in Bhopal district and college-going youngsters form a large section of the readers. This research is being carried out to compare the choices and preferences of girls and boys studying in various colleges in the city. One might think that college-going girls would only like to read news related to entertainment and fashion, while boys would read political and sports news. However, these assumptions are not only discriminatory in nature, they also reek of sexism. A detailed questionnaire was prepared to dispel such pre-conceived notions. In the study, there were a total of 1000 students involved, with 500 male students and 500 female students from different colleges. Since this is a comparative study, it was a natural progression to keep the number