A Study on the Role of Media in Taking Right to Information Act to the Sri Lankan Masses

Abstract

The Right to Information Act in 2016 is an essential milestone for Sri Lankan democracy. This new law provides an important weapon in the hands of Sri Lankan citizens, empowering them to seek any accessible information from a public authority and making the government and its functionaries more accountable and responsible. The purpose of this research is to understand and investigate the effectiveness and impact of Right to Information Act through mass media to address the issues that are challenging media to communicate. The intended objective of the research is to examine the influence of different media in communicating the Right to Information Act among the masses. When awareness on this Act is created through media, people tend to know more about it and start using it to overcome the day to day problems faced by them, thus making the objective of enacting this Act a success. This research study has made use of the survey method and content analysis to investigate the effective usage of Right to Information Act by the people and the role of media in taking the Right to Information Act to the masses. Through the survey the effectiveness of media in taking this Act to the masses is evaluated and through content analysis the actual coverage of information on RTI is evaluated and discussed. There is a significant association between frequencies of Media observation on RTI related content. There is a significant difference between age groups with respect to awareness on RTI related content by media.