Illinois Farmers' Use of Media during Arab-Israeli Conflict

The purpose was to assess the relative use of the major media of mass COMM's-newspapers, magazines, radio, & TV-by Ill farm fam's during the Arab-Israeli war of Jun 1967. Focus was on media usage by a special segment of the pop at a time of world crisis. A mail questionaire was sent to 1,070 111 commercial farmers & 948 returns were tabulated (88.6% response rate). Farm husbands & farm wives were each queried about their degree of media usage during the Arab-Israeli conflict; R's checked degree of media use, for each of the 4 major news media, on a f scale. S's were additionally asked if they had viewed any of the UN's televised sessions on the crisis. TV was the medium most used by both farm husbands & wives. Among husbands, the newspaper was a reasonably close 2nd, followed by radio. Among farm wives, the same rank order was true, except that radio was used almost as much as newspapers. For both husband & wife, magazine usage was substantially lower than the other media. Almost 60% of the R's viewed the televised UN sessions, with no signif diff between husband & wife patterns. AA.