‘Pusa Samachar’: an innovative multimedia-based extension advisory model

Access, efficiency and affordability of agricultural information are a prerequisite for achieving set targets of agricultural productivity. Information and communication technology (ICT) equipped with social media reach can play a leading role in disseminating correct information to needful farmers at the right time. The ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute in-house initiative ‘Pusa Samachar’ is an innovative multimedia-based extension advisory model that targets to reach farmers across India with timely, location-specific and customized farm information. The present study was conducted to get an overall idea about the viewership pattern and to validate this model under content, design, ease of understanding and fulfilment of information needs. Analysis of secondary data from YouTube analytics and primary data collected from different stakeholders has shown that with changes in the format, style and presentation of the content, the trend of viewing changed and therefore four episodes performed better than the others with respect to the number of views, watch hours and subscribers added per episode. The findings also indicate that the number of views depend on the episode duration (c 2 = 83.049, P = 0.001264); however, the average view duration per episode is independent of episode duration (c 2 = 3.1821, P = 1). Overall, the present study has shown how initiatives like Pusa Samachar have immense potential to reach farmers across the nation through social media. Such initiatives can be taken up by other public institutions as reliability and validity of their content is high. However, the results have shown that diversification with respect to content and audio-visuals is further needed to attract and retain more audience