TAF PUBLISHING

The current study aimed at exploring the difference between traditional and social media news and analyzed their role in gratification of informational needs on the basis of gender and usage. Five categories of local, national, international, disaster and entertainment are selected for the survey, consisting of 1383 male and female university students from the capital of each province of Pakistan. The results are statistically analyzed by using SPSS. The findings suggest that social media remain active to satiate informational needs, and the dependency of traditional media on social media posit that soon traditional media would be displaced. The obtained gratification and individual perception of participants are found significant for social media than traditional media. The moderation effect of gender and usage is also momentous. Male dominance is not only prevalent in social structure but also evident in media consumption patterns. The social and gender disparities are reflective in this current study in informational need gratification through media.