Perceived Literacy on News Media: A Study on Educated Youth

As Kerala society and its culture becomes increasingly permeated with media messages and images, it is high time to move towards media literacy as a way to educate young people about the role of media in their lives. The youth are supposed to become critical media consumers as well as citizens who actively participate in democracy/society. Media literacy is the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, and produce communication in a variety of forms. News media literacy is a subset of the broader field of media literacy. It refers to the perceived news media literacy skills which help a person to analyse news critically and knowledgeably. Adopting News Media Literacy Scale developed by Seth Ashley, Adam Maksl and Stephanie Craft, this paper is an attempt to assess the News Media Literacy of Kerala students. The study focuses on five basic principles for critical analysis of media messages giving emphasis and awareness on constructed media messages, representations of reality with embedded values and points of view, messages constructed on unique set of rules, creating meanings based on personal experience and individual interpretations, and politically and economically driven media.

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