Media Exposure and Thinking Formation of Public Sector University Students about Democracy: A Survey of Lahore City

Abstract

Pakistan is a federal democratic state where the freedom of media is ensured under article 19 of the 1973 constitution of Pakistan. On the one way, democracy provides environment to media to work freely. On the other hand, media give political awareness to masses and enough courage to them that they participate in political processes. Due to huge amount of impact of Pakistani media on educated youth and its importance for a democratic state, the present study was indented to evaluate the relationship between media exposure and thinking formation of students regarding democracy. Survey method was selected as a desire to collect the data under quantitative approach. The city of Lahore was the universe of the study. However, the researcher selected a sample of 160 students of two famous public sector universities of Lahore as Lahore College for Women University and University of the Punjab. As an instrument for data collection, a wellstructured questionnaire was used. Two hypothesis of the present research were accepted through statistical test that is chi-square by using SPSS statistical package for sciences. The results of this study show that Pakistani media has both positive and negative traits. However, it offer a pathway to democracy.