A recent survey found that news verbally heard from ‘other people’ came out as the second biggest source of news for the school going children at the secondary level.

Such seemingly unverified news source accounts for about 38.7 percent while news received from television channels accounts for the highest 49.5 percent, said the survey conducted by South Asia Center for Media in Development (SACMID)—a Dhaka based research organisation.

The survey result was unveiled at a roundtable discussion arranged at the conference room of Biswa Sahitya Kendra in the capital. Access to Information (A2I) Project of the Prime Minister Office and Free Press Limited of Netherlands jointly arranged the discussion with SACMID.

The survey was conducted over 500 students of 16 secondary schools in Dhaka and Tongi. According to the survey, newspaper is the third largest source and 35.4 percent of the surveyees received news from this “old school” source.

Facebook as a source of news accounts for 32.3 percent, Youtube for 22.6 percent, online portal for 19 percent and radio for 6.4, said the survey.

Among the students selected for the survey, 80.3 percent use smartphone with internet connection and 72 percent of them have facebook account and 47.5 percent have Youtube account.  The meeting was attended by Prof Dr Abdul Mannan, director of Directorate of Secondary and Higher Education, Prof AKM Rezaul Hasan, member of National Curriculum and Text Book Board, Rafiqul Islam Sujan, education technology expert of A2I project, Prof Dr Mominur Rashid, professor of Institute of Education and Research of Dhaka University, Prof Jude William R Genillo, head of the Department of Media Studies and Journalism of ULAB, Nazar-E-Jilani, board member of SACMID, Syed Kamrul Hasan, deputy director of SACMID and Afia Pina, program coordinator of SACMID.