Community Media for Human Development:Empowerment through the Psychological Route

There is no need to reiterate that mass communication and media exerts a tremendous and far-reaching influence upon the human mind with its contents and agenda-setting. By way of reach and influence media is a highly powerful tool for spreading developmental messages to the masses even in far-away places of the world. And particularly community media is much more suitable for this task as it enjoys a very cosy closeness to the masses at grassischolar_mains level. The major advantages of this media is that it needs to address a limited and smaller number of audiences compared to mass media, these can be run by the community itself in which it is set up, convenient in keeping a tab on the contents and the resource persons. Hence, the authors of this paper would like to examine how community media can be utilized as a medium for passing of information on developmental concerns to the masses and thereby contribute towards enhancing their standard of living with a newer enlightenment. In other words - to discuss about the role of community media in bringing the change in life style of people with regard to the development of the society and finally the empowerment of the rural mass. Media, particularly the community media has started playing a vital role in Education, Capacity Building and Training. The mainstream media with Radio, Television, Magazines, and Newspapers and of course the Internet is playing a very important and significant role in every walk of life. The primary objectives of media are to inform, educate and entertain the largest possible audience. In the process of information, education and entertainment media can concentrate on a particular issue related to the mass and can bring a social change but the main stream media have their own limitations. Here Community Media in the form of Community Radio, Community Video, and Community Press are becoming the tool for communication and bringing change in the society. The paper would also like to examine to what extent this media would prove to effective for our country m the near as well as distant future.