Climate Change and University Students Traditional Media, New Media, and Interpersonal Communication Sought for Obtaining Informational Gratifications

Abstract

The information is available from different sources in this age of media and communication. The audience has more opportunities than before to get access to various and diverse means of communication. This study contributes to the uses and gratifications knowledge and the media dependency theory by analyzing the opinion of university students about their informational gratifications from numerous information sources to explain media dependency. The university students from Pakistan constitute the population for the study. The quota sampling technique is used to select a sample of 600 university students. The quantitative approach is used to collect responses with the help of a questionnaire. The 7-point Likert scale is used to collect data. Descriptive statistics are used for the analysis of data. Overall it is revealed that newer forms of information sources in comparison to the sources of “traditional” forms of media and the means of “interpersonal communication” are mostly used among university students. Television news, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google search, the interpersonal communication with class fellows and friends are found to be active sources for getting information about climate change. The study has implications for digital marketing for climate-related content.