Press Readers -- Studies to Date and Research Needs.

This article focuses on the Polish research concerning the press. Both the theoretician dealing with problems pertaining to media of mass communications and the practitioner are interested in whom the broadcast material reaches, who reads the press. One may state that next to radio the press is the largest media of communication in the state. Press reading is a mass phenomenon in the post-war period. Everyday press reading involves the existence of two circumstances: subjectively felt need of information and appropriate amount of leisure. The comparison of the scope of press reading in several big towns indicates that a paper is taken everyday by adult inhabitants. Many researches emphasize the fact that one has an impression as if the conviction prevailed among those examined that press reading is an integral part of the socio-cultural pattern of towns' residents. The results of research prove simultaneously that the biggest scope of press reading is noted among younger people. Many authors draw attention to the fact that the lower the age of those examined, the more rare are cases of lack of dailies reading. All the more so, one finds out that younger press readers more often take several papers at a time than older people.