Satisfying the Communication Needs of Elementary School Students from Vojvodina
Satisfying the Communication Needs of Elementary School Students from Vojvodina

Summary/Abstract: The aim of the long-term project called "Children and Media", lasting for eight years now, is to notice the trends in the development of communication needs both in the public and private communication of elementary school students at the end of their early childhood (fourth grade, approximately 10 years old) and at the end of the elementary education (eighth grade, approximately 14 years old) in the cities of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina in the Republic of Serbia. The basic instrument is a questionnaire that contains 35 questions distributed in four thematic groups (media, way of communication, informing on the Internet, ways to spend free time). The questions are semi-open or closed and, based on the answers, it can be concluded with high degree of certainty that children meet the communication needs. So far, more than 3,000 students have been interviewed in a total of 67 elementary schools from Vojvodina, and the survey was anonymous. The students have task to select one or more answers out of those offered, or to offer their own answers in the provided area. The results indicate that children and teenagers meet their information needs more often and more intensely with digital than traditional media, and that the field of interest for information in this population group is narrowed down to entertainment.

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