The Role of Media in Rural Life Style Changes (The Case of Zanjan Township)

The rural society of Iran as an in transition society has been involved in a lot of changes and transformation as seeing the change values of youth, family transformations and the generational gap in rural communities. Intensity and variation range in different aspects of lifestyle in rural communities to the extent that entering new media lead to move the community from the rural lifestyle to the urban lifestyle. Considering the importance of the issue, the current descriptive study has been conducted to investigate the role of media in developments of rural life style in Zanjan Township by a survey method. The population of this study consisted of all rural residents in Zanjan Township that 250 respondents were selected through utilizing multi-stage cluster sampling. Questionnaire was used to collect the data. The face and content validity of questionnaires was confirmed by a panel of expert (Including; faculty members of Extension, Communication and Rural Development Department in University of Zanjan). The construct validity and reliability of questionnaire were evaluated through confirmatory factor analyses (measurement model). Composite reliability coefficients ranging from 0.906 to 0.929 indicated good internal consistency of the measurement tool. Data analysis was performed using SPSS 20 and AMOS 20softwares. Descriptive findings regarding life style components showed that 44.4 percent of respondents assessed their social health at the high level. Also, results showed that 70 percent of respondents had high level spiritual health. According to the results, the average watching TV among the respondents were about 4 hours and 20 minutes a day. Inferential findings showed a significant negative relationship between media environment and lifestyle. Furthermore, the results confirmed the moderating effects of age groups variable on the relationship between the study variables. So that media environment had a significant negative impact on the lifestyle for respondents with age lower than the average age group, while this effect for respondents in age higher than the average age group is non-significant.