A Survey Of College Students' Media Literacy In The Social Media Environment

Studies of media literacy from the perspective of social media draw attention from the research field of Journalism and Communication gradually. Up to now, there exist research fruits about the daily life, social communication and participation of college students influenced by single platforms like micro-blog and we-chat. However, studies of college students? media literacy based on social media, like the we-chat, micro-blog, QQ, blog, forum or online post bar, are rare. Nevertheless, the operating environment and complicated information society of social media have a growing influence on college students. Thus, social development is affected as well. This paper adopts a questionnaire survey and in-depth interviews, which exemplify quantitative and qualitative research methods simultaneously. Based on Media literacy theory, researches on college students are conducted in the following four aspects: media application and cognition, selection and consumption of information, production and re-transmission of information, and social communication and participation. Meanwhile, the diversity of media literacy shown among various samples are analyzed as well. This paper is supposed to offer reference to theory development and practical guidance to college students? media manipulation.The survey takes 800 effective samples from students of the 14 colleges and universities in Chongqing, and chooses ten from them as interviewees in in-depth interviews. The first part of the thesis is an introduction. It is composed of the background and motivation, research questions, a literature review of media literacy home and abroad, and significance and innovation of the study. The second part is the collection of samples and data, involving sample selection, questionnaire establishment, questionnaire dispatch and collection,reliability testing of the questionnaire, as well as basic information of interviewees and interview content. Part Three to Part Six are the core of the paper, which make detailed discussion about the findings, about the differences among samples and their corresponding reasons in the four aspects of media literacy. The seventh part is a conclusion involving limitations of the paper.