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Full-Text Articles in Communication

Critically Analyzing The Meanings Of “Critical” Media Literacy, W. James Potter Dec 2023

Critically Analyzing The Meanings Of “Critical” Media Literacy, W. James Potter

Journal of Media Literacy Education

This study provides a critical analysis into how authors of publications about critical media literacy express what they mean by the term. The use of multiple strategies to examine the degree to which these authors exhibit a sharing of meaning led to the conclusion that there are far more differences than commonalities across definitions of critical media literacy. The implications of this conclusion raise important questions about the value of a literature where authors seem to express so many different meanings for the concept that they use to label their common concern.


Media Literacy Policy In Morocco: A Strategic Milestone Missing, Abderrahim Chalfaouat, Karim Essoufi Dec 2023

Media Literacy Policy In Morocco: A Strategic Milestone Missing, Abderrahim Chalfaouat, Karim Essoufi

Journal of Media Literacy Education

In the digital age, diverse walks of human life have reconfigured profoundly. In the Moroccan society, digitalisation plans and the skyrocketing numbers of internet users necessitate coping literacy policies. While several community initiatives have been taken to improve the quality of media literacy, they, as bottom-up efforts, cannot suffice to meet the needs of the whole Moroccan population. Rather, the absence of a central, nationwide, cross-sectoral media literacy policy significantly challenges the effective coordination of official strategies and community initiatives in media education. This article investigates current practices in media literacy in Morocco. Using document analysis, it delves into data …


Pre-Service Training On Media Education For Teachers At Czech Universities, Karolína Mackenzie Dec 2023

Pre-Service Training On Media Education For Teachers At Czech Universities, Karolína Mackenzie

Journal of Media Literacy Education

The study shows the content of future teachers’ education and their needs to teach media education in their future practice. The preparation of future teachers within the faculties of education varies considerably across Europe, as does the level of teaching in primary and secondary schools. In the Czech Republic, media education is a cross-cutting topic in primary and some types of secondary schools and is rather rarely found in the university training of future teachers. The research shows the areas in which future teachers were prepared in their teacher training, their sense of readiness to teach and their needs in …


Show Or Tell? A Systematic Review Of Media And Information Literacy Measurements, Daniel Schofield, Reijo Petter Kupiainen, Vegard Marinius Frantzen, Anette Novak Jul 2023

Show Or Tell? A Systematic Review Of Media And Information Literacy Measurements, Daniel Schofield, Reijo Petter Kupiainen, Vegard Marinius Frantzen, Anette Novak

Journal of Media Literacy Education

Media and information literacy (MIL) is a key concept in several research fields and measuring the levels of MIL is considered valuable for policy stakeholders. However, the concept is complex, and few systematic reviews of research on measuring MIL levels have been conducted. This article draws on a systematic review of peer-reviewed studies measuring MIL between 2000 and 2021. Out of a total of 4008 publications, 236 were included in the analysis, and 87 were analysed in depth. A key finding was that several studies applied broad understandings of MIL, often based on initiatives by international organisations such as UNESCO, …


Online Media Literacy Intervention In Indonesia Reduces Misinformation Sharing Intention, Trenton Ford, Michael Yankoski, Matthew Facciani, Tim Weninger Jul 2023

Online Media Literacy Intervention In Indonesia Reduces Misinformation Sharing Intention, Trenton Ford, Michael Yankoski, Matthew Facciani, Tim Weninger

Journal of Media Literacy Education

Media literacy is widely viewed as an important tool in the fight against the spread of misinformation online. However, efforts to boost media literacy have primarily focused on Western-media and Western-oriented social media platforms, which are substantively different from the media and platforms used widely in the Global South. In the present work, we focus on the media ecosystem of Indonesia and report the results of an online media literacy intervention consisting of short-videos that were targeted specifically to social media users in Indonesia (N= 656). We found that participants in our media literacy intervention were 64% more …


Media Literacy And Covid-19 Communication: Work And Home Sphere Differences, Donnalyn Pompper, Tugce Ertem-Eray Jul 2023

Media Literacy And Covid-19 Communication: Work And Home Sphere Differences, Donnalyn Pompper, Tugce Ertem-Eray

Journal of Media Literacy Education

As a learning process wherein we ask questions to enhance knowledge, media literacy offers a powerful lens for examining how people practice communication across diverse applied contexts such as professional communicators shaping messages about COVID-19. Borrowing a page from Renee Hobbs’ (1998, 1999, 2010, 2011, 2021) media literacy education research, we sought to compare/contrast media content creators’ (journalism, advertising, public relations, marketing communication) information-seeking behaviors during the 2020-2022 COVID-19 pandemic for both their paid work and unpaid volunteer work, as well as for their own and family edification. Blending the media literacy lens with social construction theory (Berger & Luckmann, …


Parental Education In Media Literacy, Social Media And Internet Safety For Children In Bosnia And Herzegovina, Dragana Trninić, Anđela Kuprešanin Vukelić, Jovana Mlinarević Jul 2023

Parental Education In Media Literacy, Social Media And Internet Safety For Children In Bosnia And Herzegovina, Dragana Trninić, Anđela Kuprešanin Vukelić, Jovana Mlinarević

Journal of Media Literacy Education

Parents have a great responsibility to protect their children while online, and to make sure that they are using digital technologies in a safe manner; at the same time, parents are not sufficiently educated and are unfamiliar with all regulatory mechanisms and possibilities of controlling and protecting their children online. Children need some help to take advantage of all positive aspects of digital trends and to protect themselves from those which are potentially negative. The international framework in the legal sense, which is in charge of standardizing the protection of the interests and rights of children on the Internet, is …


Re: Beyond Fake News, Nate Floyd, Jaclyn Spraetz Apr 2023

Re: Beyond Fake News, Nate Floyd, Jaclyn Spraetz

Journal of Media Literacy Education

A student success librarian with a Ph.D. in mass communication and an information literacy librarian with an M.A. in secondary English education describe their efforts to innovate in the field of news literacy by incorporating the media effects research tradition. By highlighting the emotional, behavioral, and cognitive elements of information processing, the authors hope to show students how professional norms, institutional and market pressures shape the news while their own predispositions influence how they interpret the news they consume. The authors emphasize agenda-setting and framing, two fundamental media effects paradigms, and report on their effort to develop news literacy classes …


Fit For Purpose? Taking A Closer Look At The Uk’S Online Media Literacy Strategy, Poppy Gibson, Steve Connolly Apr 2023

Fit For Purpose? Taking A Closer Look At The Uk’S Online Media Literacy Strategy, Poppy Gibson, Steve Connolly

Journal of Media Literacy Education

Now more than ever, media literacy is essential as we navigate our daily lives (Mesquita-Romero et al., 2022). The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted how we need to frequently navigate media spaces filled with changing, and not always credible, information (Austin et al., 2021). Media literacy affects our habits as well as our social connections (Hobbs, 2021). This short opinion piece from two educators in the field provides an exploration of the Online Media Literacy Strategy (OMLS) published by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, UK, in 2021. The aim of the OMLS was to predict how media literacy may evolve …


The Impact Of Gender Differences And Geographic Locations On Social Media Literacy Among Public Universities Students, Heba Tallah Moustafa Helmy Jan 2023

The Impact Of Gender Differences And Geographic Locations On Social Media Literacy Among Public Universities Students, Heba Tallah Moustafa Helmy

Theses and Dissertations

The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of both gender difference and geographic location on social media literacy levels among undergraduate students in public universities in Egypt. Four aspects related to social media literacy were considered in the Likert-scale survey, including basic technical skills, digital interactions, information evaluation, and privacy and security practices. A total of 520 students participated in this exploratory research, of which 265 males and 255 females enrolled at four public universities in different geographic locations. Cairo University and Ain Shams University represent the urban areas. The other two universities are located in center-periphery …


Book Review: Developing Digital Detectives: Essential Lessons For Discerning Fact From Fiction In The ‘Fake News’ Era, Ashley Cooksey Dec 2022

Book Review: Developing Digital Detectives: Essential Lessons For Discerning Fact From Fiction In The ‘Fake News’ Era, Ashley Cooksey

Journal of Media Literacy Education

No abstract provided.


College Students’ Perspectives Of Bias In Their News Consumption Habits, Jolie C. Matthews Dec 2022

College Students’ Perspectives Of Bias In Their News Consumption Habits, Jolie C. Matthews

Journal of Media Literacy Education

This article builds off prior work on news consumption habits and perception of bias in the news by focusing on college students’ self-generated definitions of bias, and the strategies they employ to guard against how their personal bias potentially affects what news they choose to believe and consume. Through interviews with undergraduate students, findings show that while participants acknowledged they had personal bias to a degree, the majority still defined bias as an external issue imposed on them by others than as an internal issue shaping their thoughts about the sources they consumed. Some students attempted to mitigate any perceived …


Generation Z And Media Literacy: Young People’S Perceptions Of Media Literacy Education, Alanna Eavan Powers Aug 2022

Generation Z And Media Literacy: Young People’S Perceptions Of Media Literacy Education, Alanna Eavan Powers

Theses - ALL

No abstract provided.


Analysis Of Definitions Of Media Literacy, W. James Potter Jul 2022

Analysis Of Definitions Of Media Literacy, W. James Potter

Journal of Media Literacy Education

This study provides an analysis of how the term “media literacy” has been defined by authors of articles published in the Journal of Media Literacy Education. It generates answers to two questions: (1) To what extent does there appear to be a shared meaning for the term “media literacy” across authors who publish articles on this topic, and (2) When authors cite definitions of media literacy, which sources do they use most often? The findings of this content analysis reveal that there are a great many definitions being used for media literacy as well as a large number of sources …


Pm Me The Truth? The Conditional Effectiveness Of Fact-Checks Across Social Media Sites, Austin Horng-En Wang Jun 2022

Pm Me The Truth? The Conditional Effectiveness Of Fact-Checks Across Social Media Sites, Austin Horng-En Wang

Political Science Faculty Research

People use multiple social media daily. Some platforms feature public interactions like Facebook, others emphasize private communications such as Line. Although misinformation is rampant on all platforms, literature on fact-checks (FC) focuses primarily on public ones. This article provides an integrated psychological model and argues that FC is less effective on private platforms. People expect to encounter “unwelcome” FCs (incongruent with their beliefs) on public platforms, but selectively approach the “welcome” FC on private platforms. An experiment (n = 601) and a national survey (n = 1060) were implemented to test these hypotheses in the 2020 Taiwan Presidential …


Political Polarization, Misinformation, And Media Literacy, Ira Bruce Gaultney, Todd Sherron, Carrie Boden May 2022

Political Polarization, Misinformation, And Media Literacy, Ira Bruce Gaultney, Todd Sherron, Carrie Boden

Journal of Media Literacy Education

Today’s college students grew up with digital news media and social media readily available on their smartphones. As a result, students are likely to use their smartphones to access the news through social media where partisan misinformation is easily spread. Efforts to combat the spread of misinformation on social media are being explored on several fronts, including media literacy programs. While media literacy is not a cure-all for the problems posed by misinformation, it is helpful for instructors to understand how adept U.S. college students are at assessing the credibility of the news on their phones and the influence political …


Going Against The Grain? Examining The Efficacy Of Media Literacy Interventions On Congenial Media Effects, Matthew L. Blomberg May 2022

Going Against The Grain? Examining The Efficacy Of Media Literacy Interventions On Congenial Media Effects, Matthew L. Blomberg

Journal of Media Literacy Education

While people’s proclivity toward congenial partisan media has been well documented, methods of resistance are less researched. This study explores the congenial media effect, the phenomenon of our gravitation to and acceptance of like-minded media, and whether a media literacy intervention can mitigate people’s acceptance of ideologically congruent partisan media. In an online experiment (N = 199), conservatives and liberals were exposed to differing media literacy interventions, one reviewing the traits of objectivity and bias, another which combined the former with an opportunity to reflect on participants’ own political beliefs. All were then exposed to amenable partisan content on the …


Measuring Fake News Acumen Using A News Media Literacy Instrument, Tyler W. S. Nagel May 2022

Measuring Fake News Acumen Using A News Media Literacy Instrument, Tyler W. S. Nagel

Journal of Media Literacy Education

News media literacy education is gaining increased attention in the age of fake news and post-truth America. However, as with any pedagogical goal, it is important to be able to evaluate the success of the delivery. In a survey built on existing news literacy frameworks, 1476 students at a large Canadian polytechnic answered questions about their own news literacy, fake news acumen, and news consumption habits. Analysis of the data suggests that conscientious fake-news attitudes and behaviors are correlated with an existing news media literacy scale, providing a method of evaluating the success of fake news education efforts.


Digital News Literacy And Social Work: Core Competencies, Cynthia H. Nover Jan 2022

Digital News Literacy And Social Work: Core Competencies, Cynthia H. Nover

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Digital news refers to online news, television news, and other electronic sources where individuals can gather information about the world around them. As college students increasingly get their news from online sources and comedy television, it is important for students to have appropriate media literacy skills to evaluate content. The relationship between news literacy skills and core competencies of social work education is discussed in this paper, with recommendations for incorporating news literacy in the classroom.


Beyond ‘Fake News’: Opportunities And Constraints For Teaching News Literacy, Judith E. Rosenbaum, Jennifer L. Bonnet, R. Alan Berry Dec 2021

Beyond ‘Fake News’: Opportunities And Constraints For Teaching News Literacy, Judith E. Rosenbaum, Jennifer L. Bonnet, R. Alan Berry

Journal of Media Literacy Education

Teaching news literacy has, in recent decades, become cross-disciplinary, and as a result, more collaborative. This paper centers the importance of this collaboration by describing a workshop designed and taught by a media studies professor, a media literacy expert, and their subject librarian. In this essay, we discuss the workshop in terms of best practices for teaching about media and information literacy in an era marked by digital news consumption and the proliferation of claims of “fake news.” First, we elaborate on the value of the collaboration between the discipline, the library, and the field, as it allowed us to …


Viral Hangouts: The Media Literacy Lifeline I Didn’T Realize I Needed, Scott Spicer Dec 2021

Viral Hangouts: The Media Literacy Lifeline I Didn’T Realize I Needed, Scott Spicer

Journal of Media Literacy Education

This article describes my experience as an academic media librarian initially seeking guidance on best support practices for the virtual world from other media literacy educators at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak. What I found through the Virtual Viral Hangouts community turned out to be so much more! In addition to sharing tips on media literacy education (my contribution emphasized commercial media resources and student created media projects in virtual contexts), I also developed dear friendships with participants from all walks of life. The one hour a day spent away from my daily work served as a lifeline, …


Connect The Dots, Edward Mcdonough Dec 2021

Connect The Dots, Edward Mcdonough

Journal of Media Literacy Education

During the dawn of the Covid Pandemic our isolation was a depressant. As teachers we were struggling with how to teach, as the popular saying explains, in an environment “that was like building an airplane as we were learning how to fly it.” As a teacher in practice, Virtually Viral Hangouts became my antidepressant. This daily online community of educators gave me the skills to teach more effectively during the pandemic and beyond. The experience taught me how to seek and forge connections with students and cyber colleagues; how to carve out a cyber environment of psychological safety to …


A Qualitative Study Of Early Adolescents’ Critical Thinking About The Content And Consequences Of Media Violence, Erica Scharrer, Yuxi Zhou Dec 2021

A Qualitative Study Of Early Adolescents’ Critical Thinking About The Content And Consequences Of Media Violence, Erica Scharrer, Yuxi Zhou

Journal of Media Literacy Education

Research shows that young people are likely to encounter considerable amounts of violence in the media they use. Some of those depictions trivialize the severity of violence. Past studies show that media literacy education can spur critical thinking regarding violent portrayals in media texts. But rarely do prior studies employ qualitative methods to understand how young media audience members reason through the key question of whether media violence is either surprising or concerning. In the current study, an in-school media literacy program is offered to 48 6th graders who provide data in the form of written responses to a number …


Higher Education Students’ Social Media Literacy In Ethiopia: A Case Of Bahir Dar University., Atinafu Behailu Dec 2021

Higher Education Students’ Social Media Literacy In Ethiopia: A Case Of Bahir Dar University., Atinafu Behailu

Journal of Media Literacy Education

This study investigates the status of Bahir Dar University students’ social media literacy and how associated factors affect developing core competencies. A combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods have been employed in the study. Both descriptive and inferential statistics of means core, standard deviation, one sample t-test, independent sample t-test, correlation and multiple regressions were used to analyze data gathered from the quantitative design. Data gathered from FGD were analyzed qualitatively. Accordingly, the students’ overall social media level was found to be low. Female students perform slightly lower than their counterpart male students. Among the five skills of social …


An Approach To Creative Media Literacy For World Issues, Abduljalil Nasr Hazaea Dec 2021

An Approach To Creative Media Literacy For World Issues, Abduljalil Nasr Hazaea

Journal of Media Literacy Education

This article introduces an approach to creative media literacy for world issues (WIs) such as Covid-19. In so doing, the article integrates four positions on discourse and media as terrible facets of globalization in the context of critical discourse analysis (CDA). The objectivist position deals with WIs as neutral discourse shared among humanity and distributed through English as an international language and educational media. The ideologist position treats creative media literacy as relations of power between global and local identities in the form of competing discourses associated with WIs. The rhetorical position reveals the hidden strategies used in global media …


Media, Obesity Discourse, And Participatory Politics: Exploring Digital Engagement Among University Students, Tao Papaioannou Dec 2021

Media, Obesity Discourse, And Participatory Politics: Exploring Digital Engagement Among University Students, Tao Papaioannou

Journal of Media Literacy Education

Situated within research on youth, participatory politics, and media framing of obesity, this study examined how undergraduate students in a media literacy course engaged with obesity discourse as a nexus of civic participation. Twenty-nine students enrolled on the course identified frames of obesity in plus-size model Tess Holliday’s Instagram posts surrounding her controversial Cosmopolitan cover in 2018. Analysis of these frames – self-validation, injustice of fat-shaming and stigmatization, influences of Instagram celebrities on fat embodiment, and health stereotypes of obese people – enabled the students to critique activist responses to accepted body norms and moral values facilitating weight bias. In …


Do Media Literacies Approach Equity And Justice?, Paul Mihailidis, Srividya Ramasubramanian, Melissa Tully, Bobbie Foster, Emily Riewestahl, Patrick Johnson, Sydney Angove Sep 2021

Do Media Literacies Approach Equity And Justice?, Paul Mihailidis, Srividya Ramasubramanian, Melissa Tully, Bobbie Foster, Emily Riewestahl, Patrick Johnson, Sydney Angove

Mass Communications - All Scholarship

It is often assumed that media literacy serves to protect and uphold democratic practice and that media literate citizens are the best safeguards for democracy. However, little attention is paid to defining this practice and its relationship to ongoing inequities within democratic societies. In this essay, we argue media literacy operates from three core assumptions; media literacy creates knowledgeable individuals, empowers communities, and encourages democratic participation. The first assumption draws out an individual’s skills and critical thinking in media literacy practices. The second assumption focuses on the community aspect of media literacy, specifically which communities are best served by media …


Teaching Beyond Verifying Sources And “Fake News”: Critical Media Education To Challenge Media Injustices, Jeremy Stoddard, Jonathan Tunstall, Leila Walker, Emily Wight Sep 2021

Teaching Beyond Verifying Sources And “Fake News”: Critical Media Education To Challenge Media Injustices, Jeremy Stoddard, Jonathan Tunstall, Leila Walker, Emily Wight

Journal of Media Literacy Education

Current popular media literacy programs overemphasize the verifiability, reliability, and expertise of sources over the analysis of how marginalized groups are represented. This analysis privileges traditional news sources – and a hierarchy of “objective” news. These same institutions have been historically responsible for producing and reinforcing stereotypes and media injustices toward marginalized groups. These media literacy programs lack emphasis on how issues of race, oppression, and politics are represented in factually accurate sources. We demonstrate how an alternative model of critical media education can attempt to address issues of representation and media injustice within the contemporary global media ecosystem. We …


Do Media Literacies Approach Equity And Justice?, Paul Mihailidis, Srividya Ramasubramanian, Melissa Tully, Bobbie Foster, Emily Riewestahl, Patrick Johnson, Sydney Angove Sep 2021

Do Media Literacies Approach Equity And Justice?, Paul Mihailidis, Srividya Ramasubramanian, Melissa Tully, Bobbie Foster, Emily Riewestahl, Patrick Johnson, Sydney Angove

Journal of Media Literacy Education

It is often assumed that media literacy serves to protect and uphold democratic practice and that media literate citizens are the best safeguards for democracy. However, little attention is paid to defining this practice and its relationship to ongoing inequities within democratic societies. In this essay, we argue media literacy operates from three core assumptions; media literacy creates knowledgeable individuals, empowers communities, and encourages democratic participation. The first assumption draws out an individual’s skills and critical thinking in media literacy practices. The second assumption focuses on the community aspect of media literacy, specifically which communities are best served by media …


Child Participation In The Design Of Media And Information Literacy Interventions: A Scoping Review And Thematic Analysis, Linus Andersson, Martin Danielsson May 2021

Child Participation In The Design Of Media And Information Literacy Interventions: A Scoping Review And Thematic Analysis, Linus Andersson, Martin Danielsson

Journal of Media Literacy Education

The article presents findings from a review of scientific articles about media and information literacy interventions targeted at children and adolescents. More specifically, the review centers on the quantity and quality of child participation in the design of such interventions. The findings indicate that designs with high levels of child participation constitute a minority in the sample. Most of them aim at “behavior-relevant” outcomes, e.g., reduce smoking or obesity. Interventions aimed at “media-relevant” outcomes, e.g., helping children to become competent media users, seem less widespread. Based on these findings, we argue that top-down initiatives to the promotion of media and …