Journal of Mass Communication & Journalism

This survey sought to find out the state of political communication among West African parliamentarians in view of the expanded mediality that newer digital channels like social media, the internet and mobile telecommunication tools are bringing to the political landscape in addition to traditional political channels of party politics, rallies, meetings, constituency visits and traditional media like television, radio and newspapers. The study had deliberately focused on the three core parliamentary functions; lawmaking, representation and oversight, asking key questions under each function to delineate the views and practices of legislators in using media channels. Findings from this study show that although there is a remarkable improvement in acquisition of tools, legislators are reticent in deploying the full powers of new channels in interaction with citizens, preferring traditional channels like television and radio in activity propagation and political meetings and constituency visits to newer tools like e-petition, e-consultation, blogging, personal websites, e-polling and other forums. However there are evidences of rising Facebook use and intensive use of telephony and text messages in communicating with constituents. There are also evidences of the increased use of emails and internet research in gathering information for lawmaking.

This paper examines how pregnant women living in India use information and communication technologies (ICTs), principally internet, to access pregnancy-related information. Further the researchers considered women with the Indian family system have to take more household activities and their health system hence they may tend to prefer reading online as the best method to gather the information which they need. Demographic variables such as age, educational qualification, occupation and monthly income of the respondents detailed were considered to be independent variables for the study and using information communication technology by pregnant women before and during pregnancy was categorized as dependent variables. The data was gathered through the survey method, statistical analyses were performed to find the relationships between the independent and dependent variables. In this study, the researchers attempt to understand how the new media of technologies are being accessed, used and gratified by educated, young pregnant women on their health related queries through new media of communication. This study is expected to throw newer lights on the growing reliance on new media technology among the first time literate pregnant women