The Communication Effects Gap

The medium of television in the context of organized teleclubs with carefully designed content may actually be effective in leveling previous inequities and thus reduce the gap between larger and smaller farmers. The present research is unique in several respects: (1) it examines television for one of the first times in relation to the communication effects gap; (2) its results run contrary to many previous studies; (3) the study was conducted under field conditions in India on an extremely low budget, demonstrating a necessary resourcefulness ; (4) survey research methods are combined with content analysis; and (5) the results are crucially relevant to the Indian government's policy and to the recently initiated Satellite Instructional Television Experiment (SITE), in which the A TS-6 satellite broadcasts television programs to schoolchildren and adults in almost 2,400 villages in six different Indian states.