New Communication Technologies Call For New Media Literacy

Literacy is a collection of people’s moral level, knowledge structure and cognitive ability. As long as cognitive, and will, people will be able to upgrade their literacy level during his or her life, also includes media literacy.The public is no stranger to the concept of "media literacy", from the view of the world. It is generally recognized that British scholar ER.Levis and his student Denis. Sampson firstly putted forward the words "media literacy" in a paper published in1933, and it was for hundreds of years from the first newspaper born.From then on, people began to do theoretical and empirical research on the public media literacy, and the most representative is Eller Neumann. In his1980book he putted forward the famous theory of "spiral of silence", from which he revealed the problems of public media literacy in traditional media conditions.But what has been given can be taken away. With the new technology of network and others applied to the communication field, people found new problems:"The spiral of silence "went into reverse; the game between government and the public on the right of discourse has become increasingly; and the public has a variety of improper behavior in the network etc. All this seems to indicate that the traditional media literacy went to the "crossroads" and should decide on what path to follow.From the book of "the audience analysis" by Denis Mcquail in2006, we seem to find some answers. In the book he first proposed the concept of "the audience under the new media environment ", and predicts the future "audience". Things started to change.Back home, the domestic study of media literacy has just started, which has no time to delay, especially the theoretical and empirical research on public literacy under the new media environment. China has the most Internet users in the world, and the roles and competencies of this huge group have appeared i increasingly, which attracts more and more attention of policy research department of the government. At the same time, we should also see that Network chaos appearing from time to time, to a certain extent, causes the Internet public opinion environment contamination. Under such a theoretical background and realistic conditions, the government and the public’s requirements on the "new media literacy" seem ready to come out at one’s call.This paper is completed under this background.Based on the phenomenon of network related data analysis and case study, and combined the professional theory, this paper analysis these questions as follows:As journalists, the relevant experts and government departments, how to guide the public to maintain rational in the face of the news in the face of increasingly complex and changeable network public opinion; And as the general audience, how to play a greater role in the process of media, and how to guide, norms and develop their new media literacy in practicing.The hypothesis of this paper is as follows:(1) Following the changes of communication modes caused by influence of new media, the traditional media literacy can’t adapt to the media ecosystem.(2) Under the background of the new communication technology, everybody is audience and also communicator. Different audiences have different ways to use this new communication technology.(3) Media literacy education in the new media society is a system.This paper draws the following conclusions:Under the background of new communication technology, the traditional media and the new media influence each other. A new mode of communication and new communication ecosystem change the way which people used to get information. The traditional media literacy only cultivates qualified audience, and the communicators’ work is prescribed by the professional regulations and the laws.with the advent of new communication technologies, the distinction between aud ience and communicator has become blurred.In the two ends in communication, the status of audience and communicator has become different, they has both acquired a n ew status in certain degree--the User in new communication era. However, professional communicator should be categorized as different from "ordinary user", the issue of media literacy should then be taken seriously. Additionally, another important and semi-professional group---Big V users---may also play a key role in the course, and should be categorized into a new group, and the media literacy of these users should be valued.When traditional media literacy is still not able to cultivate a benign condition in China, new communication technologies makes expand the connotation of media literacy requirements necessary, perhaps it will be a difficult process, but it is imperative for the current society.As a basic research, research of new media literacy should be combined with practice, and the theory should be applied to practice in the network. But because of the limited time and conditions, this paper only gives a preliminary theory. The research emphasis in the future, should be the empirical research on the related theory applied to guide the public daily life on the Internet, which is also the expectation of the author.