Research On The Media Literacyand Media Literacy Education Of Middle School Students

The 21 st century is the highly developed society of media and information. The impact of the media is everywhere, it changes people’s values and way of life. Media is convenient but also has some negative impact. With the development and popularization of the mass media, every country has become increasingly concerned about the development of media literacy education.Media literacy education has an important significance both for the individual or for society. Especially for middle school students, since they are immature, they will be more susceptible to media information. Media literacy education can help middle school students access to information quickly, it also can develop their critical thinking skills, make them become proactive, rather than passive.This studyis based ontheoryof media literacyandmedia education, throughcollecting, collatingand analyzingthe media literacy, we dividedthe media literacy to five dimensions as follows:knowledge of media, media behavior, ability to usethe media, mediacriticismabilityand mediaethics. We use the questionnaires and interviewsways to survey the media literacy level and thecurrent situationof the middle school students of Suzhou. And find the problemsof media literacy education, to take the experience of United States, then bring up some suggests for our country to develop our media literacy education. Through tcollating and analyzing thedata,we draw the following conclusions:First, middle school studentsare at the middle levelof media literacy, their knowledge of mediaand mediacriticismability are worse,and theiroperatingskills andmediaethicsare good.Secondly, media literacy educationis not good in middle school, schoolsand families don’t take media literacy educationseriously.Third, middle school students use the media just for leisure and entertainment.Fourth,for the media literacy level, there was no significantdifference on male and female.Fifth,for the media literacylevel, students in different gradeshavesignificantly difference.The upperclassman is higher than thelower gradestudent.Sixth,education level of parents will influence middle school students’. If the education levelof parents is higher, the children’s will be higher.Seventh, thefamily incomealso influence children’s media literacylevels, student in highhousehold income family, their media literacylevel is good than lowerhousehold income family.Eighth, there are three factors influenced the level of media literacy. They are personalfactors, school factors and familyfactors.The personal factorsinclude personal knowledge, the time of contacting media;The school factors include the school’s attitude towards media literacy education, the school’s media environment and teacher’s guide.The family factors include parents attitude about child’s Internet behaviorand parent’s guide for child’s media behavior.Finally, through summarizing the experience of US school media literacy education. We bring up some suggests to our problems of middle school media literacy education.