Definition And Measurement Of Communication Literacy

Communication literacy is a study, which related to the modernity of the citizen in a macro way, and career development in a micro way. So far, as a new concept, only a few qualitative analysis have been developed. This article is concentrated on the definition of communication literacy and its dimensionality and factors.Basing on Wu TingJun's previous conception as social and communication competence in the media developed environment and McLuhan's theory--media are "extensions" of human, the conceptual definition of communication literacy is given as the effectively and appropriately communication competence directly or through media between two people. And the operational definition is given as the performance in interpersonal communication and media communication.A university-students-facing random sampling was adopted, and exploring factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis were used to elicit a fit model of communication literacy. Two dimensionalities are found in this model. They are Interpersonal Communicative Competence (ICC) and Media Communicative Competence(MCC). ICC including 7 factors: esteem, bidirectional communication, verbal expression, empathy, communication style, non-verbal expression, and appetency. MCC including 2 factors: media access and media content creation.