COVERAGE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY ON OPINION PAGES OF LEADING DAILIES

Abstract

We live in a modern world which is full with a lot of inventions and techniques. Our lives are largely facilitated by scientific inventions. Media is also a by-product of scientific inventions i.e. printing press, radio, television, internet etc. The connection of media and the society is of huge importance. Media is a mirror image of the society which represents the overall picture of society. Beside this the media educate and inform the people about certain realities and different spheres of society. In today’s world we largely depend on science & technology and also very much aware of the point that how crucial is the science in economical development of the country. Being an underdeveloped country we need to focus more on science & technology and for this our media has to play a decisive role of opinion maker. Through extensive coverage to science and technology sector we may be able to construct a scientific culture in our society which will resultantly be helpful to achieve the goal of knowledge economy. This study has examined the role of media specifically print media through measuring the frequency of coverage it give to science and technology on opinion pages. As Pakistan is a developing country and the majority of population generally understand national language so it is worth mentioning that the role of media is to ascertained through classification of Urdu and English print media. In this study we have chosen one year publications i.e. 360 editions of the year 2017 of two newspapers, one Urdu and one English to analyze the trend of media that which language gives more coverage to science and technology news, resultantly, it will be helpful for us to construct an appropriate opinion regarding media coverage of science and technology.