6837
I happened to listen to an interesting IFPRI
(International Food Policy Research Institute) podcast recently – the podcast
was about how IFPRI researchers found that farmers could not understand the
Soil Health Cards (SHC) issued to them and how they went about in making this
facility more ‘accessible’ to the farmers (The podcast is available for
listeners at https://www.ifpri.org/podcast/research-talks/episode-9-its-all-design-soil-health-cards-india
along with a transcript). This goes on to reveal that podcasts are now
increasingly being used as one of the digital extension methods. We find that
many agricultural news websites in India now have a podcast section.
A podcast,
primarily an audio medium (some podcasts have a video component as well), is a
programme made available in digital format for download over the Internet.
Though podcasts were introduced in the 2000s, this format became more popular,
with the onset of the COVID – 19 pandemic.
Now, the
question that comes to mind is how do the extension professionals ascertain if
the podcasts are worth-listening, by the farmers and other stakeholders. Cash
et al. (2003) and Chivers et al (2023) have suggested a few attributes that
would make for successful podcasts.
1. Credibility: referring to
the validity, accurateness, and quality of podcasts.
2. Relevance: Farmers are
highly heterogeneous. A podcast should not only be credible, but also should
explain why it is important to the listener by being relevant to his/her
interests and needs.
3. Legitimacy: Legitimacy
refers to the inclusion of farmers/stakeholders in the production of the
podcast as well as the presentation of balanced views, that would make the
podcast legitimate enough.
4. Accessibility: Here
accessibility is defined as whether farmers perceive this content as easy to access,
whether they can physically access the content and whether the content is
accessible in terms of their knowledge requirements and learning preferences.
The listeners to
podcasts are likely to retain the information conveyed, if the aforementioned
attributes are achieved. JEE readers can use ‘Podcast search engines’ to find
and share podcast episodes, which they find interesting.
This issue of
JEE has papers on topics such as usage of mobile phones by livestock-based
women self-help groups & extent of women’s participation in decision making.
Do send your feedback on these papers to editorextension@gmail.com .