News Media Literacy and Political Engagement: What’s the Connection?

Abstract

Scholars and educators have long hoped that media education is positively related to prosocial goals such as political and civic engagement. With a focus on measuring news media literacy with emphasis on media knowledge, need for cognition and media locus of control, this study surveyed 537 college students and found positive relationships between news media literacy and two political engagement measures: current events knowledge and internal political efficacy. Findings show that news media literacy is not associated with political activity, although some dimensions of news media literacy are associated with lower levels of political trust. Results help to define significant components of news media literacy and suggest that these components help foster positive relationships with civic and political life.

Bridging the gap? The impact of a media literacy educational intervention on news media literacy, political knowledge, political efficacy among lower-educated youth

“…Future studies should also measure selfperceived media literacy, which taps one's ability and confidence in critical news consumption (Vraga, et al, 2015) and compare against one's actual knowledge and literacy skills. We strongly recommend future research also to incorporate another dimension of news media literacy in their research designs: "news media knowledge structures" as introduced by Maksl et al (2015) and later applied by Ashley et al (2017). Using multiple-choice questions, this measurement tapped people's actual knowledge about how the media function.…”

“…Counting the number of correct answers allows for an unambiguous measure regarding how much citizens know about the media. This alternative measurement would have probably yielded an opposite effect; for example, Ashley et al (2017) show that the three dimensions of media literacy have different kinds of relationships with a range of outcome variables.…”

“…Considering the specific characteristics of the program, including an element of active involvement in co-creation of the video material of the program by the students, we expect learning outcomes for political internal efficacy, political knowledge and news media literacy. Previous studies on the effects of educational interventions related to news media literacy have shown mixed results, however (for an overview, see Ashley, et al, 2017). For instance, Tully and Vraga (2018) found that some students enrolled in communication courses experience more growth in news media literacy than others.…”

“…This is especially the case for lower-educated youth, who usually start lagging behind in their socialization into citizenship during adolescence when compared to their higher-educated peers (Moeller & de Vreese, 2015). The educational environment, therefore, seems the optimal context to optimize their socialization in the high-choice media environment, although previous research on such classroom interventions has yielded mixed results (e.g., Ashley et al, 2017;Tully & Vraga, 2017).…”

“…The program was specifically designed for this target group to stimulate civic competence, in particular internal political efficacy, news media literacy and political knowledge. We expect that civic and media education will enhance civic competence, as a recent study found that news media literacy positively relates to political knowledge and internal political efficacy (Ashley et al, 2017). A two-wave panel study with a pre-post design was employed to test the impact of the civic educational classes as well as of the additional impact of more active involvement in the program (of students who produced the video material) on three pillars of civic competence: news media literacy, internal political efficacy and political knowledge.…”