The Media Literacy Research Of Vulnerable Groups

With the rapid development of market economy and sharp transformation ofsocial structure, the vulnerable groups issues are becoming increasingly prominentand social risk factors caused by vulnerable groups are increasing in China nowadays.Continuously emerging social conflicts and a series of mass events brought extremelynegative impacts on society. Therefore, the ability to properly resolve vulnerablegroups issues is critical to the stability and harmony of society and country in a longrun.Domestic researches on vulnerable groups have focused on fields such associology, politic science, economics, and anthropology. The purpose of this paper isto study how the interests of vulnerable groups were protected under the perspectiveof mass communication through investigations and analysis. By analyzing the currentstatus of media literacy of vulnerable groups, we can understand their spiritual needs,draw attentions of mass media and society on them, help them to improve medialiteracy, and learn to use media to make our work, study and life more convenient.Since vulnerable groups structure is complicated, this paper selects migrantworkers that occupy a large number in vulnerable groups as the research object,mainly based on the aspect of income, political status, living condition and manyother considerations. In this research, the author selected450migrant workers fromJinan as the research objects to do the questionnaire survey and case interview. Thesemigrant workers are limited to those who left home but never quited their occupationas a farmer. The purpose of these migrant workers is only to make money in citiesrather than to settle down. A certain proportion of migrant workers in different aspectsof life were selected as research objects because they are from various industries.Those target industries include processing and manufacturing, construction, sanitationsecurity, catering and so on.This paper consists of six parts. The first part is the statement of researchbackground, significance and research status,as well as the introduction of the research methods adopted in the process of investigation and research. The secondpart introduces the research object’s basic characteristics and living condition in detail.The third part is the questionnaire analysis. It uses SPSS statistical analysis softwareto analyze the respondents’valid data, and then virtually display the statistical resultsin the form of charts in order to summarize the current media literacy of the migrantworkers. The fourth part discusses several major factors that affect migrant works’media literacy by explaining and analyzing the research object with scientific theoryin a comprehensive, deep and systematic way, which is from the macroscopicperspective of mass communication. The fifth part analyzes the negative effects onsociety result from the absence of media literacy of vulnerable groups, which includepsychological imbalance of vulnerable groups, intensified conflicts between differentsocial classes, and lost of media public credibility. The last part discusses how toimprove the media literacy of vulnerable groups on the basis of previous theoreticalanalysis.It provides suggestions from aspects of vulnerable groups itself, mass mediaand government. Hopefully, it might help to improve the media literacy of vulnerablegroups.Migrant workers in China have many features,such as huge number, unevendistribution, different cultural levels and large regional differences. This surveyselects450individuals from Jinan in a relatively small scale. Thus, the conclusioncould not reveal the real situation of the rest of the province and the nation.Most researches deal with media literacy are limited in a theoretical level. Incontrast, this paper uses the form of questionnaire and face-to-face interview withresearch objects to obtain the first-hand materials. It could ensure the reliability of thematerials to a large extent and avoid false data caused by quote and reproduce.Hopefully, this empirical study result could be used as a reference to otherresearchers.