Investigating Public Perception of Zambia News and Information Services' Role in Facilitating Development in Lusaka

Abstract

The objective of this study was to investigate public perception of ZANIS’s role in facilitating development in Zambia, particularly Lusaka. Among the specific objectives of the study was to investigate the opinions of people in Lusaka regarding the role that ZANIS plays in facilitating development, examine knowledge levels created through communication by ZANIS on development issues among members of the public in Lusaka, examine the extent to which the members of the public in Lusaka participate in development programmes arising from ZANIS channels of communication and to determine the effectiveness of channels used by ZANIS to communicate development activities. The research design, which was exploratory in nature, used the mixed method approach and triangulated instruments of data collection. The population was 100 respondents. Random sampling was used to select the sample from the general public. In depth interviews were also conducted with four officers from ZANIS and an officer from the Ministry of Health. The researcher also used the thematic analysis on qualitative data and used excel software for descriptive statistics and generation of frequencies and distribution. The study established that most of the respondents were aware that ZANIS is a government news agency and regarded the institution as mouth piece of government. The majority of respondents acknowledged the fact that they had access to government information pertaining to development activities taking place around the country through ZANIS. In addition, the research revealed that the majority of the respondents did not participate in development activities arising from ZANIS channels of communication as the methods used to reach the masses were no longer appealing. The majority of the respondents stated that the effectiveness of channels used by ZANIS to communicate development activities were on average but needed to be improved for effectiveness in communicating development activities to the grass roots. The study recommended that government equips the institution with adequate human, financial and physical resource to enable the public make informed decisions and there about bring about social and economic development. KEY WORDS: Channels of Communication, Development Communication, News Agency, Perception