Disconnected from discourse: women's radio listening in rural Samangan, Afghanistan

The following study was conducted in a remote mountainous region of Samangan province, and focuses on understanding women's media use in a poor Hazara village, using a quantitative survey of female heads of households, focus groups with women, girls, and men, semi-structured interviews, and observation as the main sources of its data.

This study concludes that current operational assumptions of western radio organizations have created significant gaps between what rural Afghan women require and what their media system provides. Radio and word of mouth were often the women's only connection with the outside world. Forced migration had introduced many of the women to other communities and media systems, but on returning to their village, their mobility and access to alternative media was again highly restricted.