Ahmad Ghazali AKMAR HAYATI
Universiti Putra Malaysia, Faculty of Modern Languages and Communication, Department of Communication
43400 Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia
Tel:+603-89468777 Fax: +603-89485950 E-mail: akmar@fbmk.upm.edu.my
Omar SITI ZOBIDAH
Universiti Putra Malaysia, Faculty of Modern Languages and Communication, Department of Communication
43400 Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia
Tel:+603-8946 8797 Fax: +603-89485950 E-mail: zobidah@putra.upm.edu.my
Bolong JUSANG
Universiti Putra Malaysia, Faculty of Modern Languages and Communication,Department of Communication
43400 Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia
Tel:+603- 8946 8780 Fax: +603-89485950 E-mail: jusang@fbmk.upm.edu.my
Osman MOHD NIZAM
Department of Communication, Faculty of Modern Languages and Communication,
Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia
Tel:+603- 8946 8790 Fax: +603-89485950 E-mail: nizamosman@fbmk.upm.edu.my
Mansor T. TENKU MAZUWANA
Universiti Putra Malaysia, Faculty of Modern Languages and Communication,Department of English
43400 Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia
Tel: +603 – 8946 8736 Fax: +603-89485950 E-mail: mazuwana@fbmk.upm.edu.my
ABSTRACT
Newspaper is by far the most comprehensive printed medium among teenagers. The way newspaper represent the information will be able to generate more inputs to teenagers after they read various issues discussed. The objectives of this study are to identify the types of news which are chosen by teenagers; and to investigate the factors which are associated with the teenagers’ acceptance to the newspaper. A total of 387 teenagers, aged between 16 and 17 years old, who were students from 10 national secondary schools in the Federal Territory, Kuala Lumpur were selected to be the respondents of this study. Results shows that entertainment news seem to be the teenagers’ preferred choice. At the same times, the findings
Ahmad Ghazali Akmar Hayati, et al. – Newspapers: Teenagers and Their Needs indicates that the contents of the newspapers have fulfilled the needs of the teenagers. However, the correlation test shows that the relationship between cognitive are moderate, weak for the affective, personal and escapism and there is no relationship between social needs and acceptance. As a conclusion, entertainment news has become the main choice of news among the teenagers. Meanwhile, the factor which is strongly associated with the teenagers’ acceptance is cognitive. It is hoped that the results of this study will be able to assist the newspaper institutions to publish contents relating to education and knowledge, which are connected to entertainment so that the newspapers could be one of the leading learning references, besides the school textbooks and printed references in order to fulfill various needs of the teenagers.
Key words: newspapers; needs; teenagers; news