ISLAMABAD, Mar 29 (APP): Two students of Allama Iqbal Open University (AIOU), Shabbir Hussain and Hummad Abbas, Monday successfully defended their M.Phil research thesis on the topics of ‘Social and Psychological Impacts of Television Coverage Regarding Child Sexual Abuses on Parents’ and ‘Coverage of Pakistan’s Water Crisis in National Dailies’, respectively.
They presented the defence of their thesis before the committee, which met with Dean of Social Sciences Professor Dr Syed Hassan Raza in the chair.
Chairman Mass Communication Department AIOU Dr Saqib Riaz, Asst Professor AIOU Dr Shahid Hussain, Head of Communication Studies Bahauddin Zakariya University Multan Dr Muhammad Ashraf Khan and Dr Salma Umber of University Faisalabad were the committee’s members.
The meeting was jointly organized by the AIUO’s Department of Mass Communication and Faculty of Social Sciences, and coordinated by Research Assistant Jamal Afsar.
Shabbir Hussain while defending his thesis, said the function of mass media was to inform, educate and entertain the people, besides shaping their opinion and beliefs.
“The way electronic media treat the child sexual abuse incidents, leaves many social, emotional, psychological and other impacts on the society and media coverage of such incidents not only has direct effects on the children but also on their parents,” he stressed.
Through the study, he said, he evaluated the parents’ perception vis-à-vis socially, psychologically, and also the effects they experienced after hearing such words like rape etc and seeing visuals of child sexual abuse incidents.
He concluded that the child sexual abuse in the society existed due to the Pakistani television content. Majority of the respondents of his questionnaire viewed that there should be no explicit discussion about sexual abuses on electronic media and the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority was not playing its due role in that regard.
Hummad Abbas while defending his thesis, presented the data of leading national English and Urdu dailies regarding print media coverage of the water crisis.
It was need of the hour for a country like Pakistan, which already had many enough challenges, to take timely solid action to counter another great disaster in shape of water scarcity for its conservation as per national requirements, he stressed.
Hammad during his research found that though the leading print media was giving reasonable space to the burning issue, yet the public was more inclined towards a national policy to persistently promote the idea to conserve water as much as possible.
