27 pages., The study on the information-seeking behavior of the agricultural community was undertaken in the attabira area of bargarh district of Odisha with objectives to study the different areas in which they require information frequently and determine the sources through which they rely on. It was found that most of the people are dependent upon agriculture in the attabira area. They started working at the age of 18. Most of the farmers (85.6%) of farmers opted for pooja seeds for cultivation. The study shows 7.36% of the respondents are facing difficulties in irrigation facilities. About 78.9% of the people are talking about MSP (Minimum support price). About 7.3% of farmers gathered information from social media, TV, Call centers, etc. It is observed that the highest numbers of people are talking from a nationalized bank. The farmers were getting information from various sources like TV media, print media, etc. The library plays a crucial role in the dissemination of knowledge. The farmer knowledge center was established where they could get their query solved. The knowledge centers need to provide the right information at the right time in a personal way. The result reveals that a large number of people of the attabira district are influenced by socio-economic variables.
13 pages., While work on agricultural messaging is abundant, the way that audiences form perceptions of messages is not well understood and little research has examined the cognitive effects of image and word associations in an agricultural context. Previous knowledge gap research has shown that socioeconomic status and access to information could be one contributor of perception formation. We propose that these variables could also impact cognitive processing. Therefore, the purpose of this exploratory study was to examine how components of cognitive dissonance and knowledge gap theory apply in the context of a contentious agricultural issue. Data were collected from 1,049 United States’ residents through an online survey with an embedded experimental design. Respondents randomly received one of two image and word association pairings. After viewing the treatment, measures of cognitive conflict, demographics, and desire to learn more were collected. The results showed that the cognitive conflict instrument performed differently in the context of a complex agricultural issue than in prior research. Additionally, the message pairings had a stronger influence on cognitive conflict components than demographic characteristics. Finally, the desire to learn more was impacted by the message treatments. Future research on cognitive conflict and advanced modeling is recommended.