A Case Study On The Use Of New Media And Media Literacy Among Middle-aged Rural Women

In the era of mass media,women were often passive in communicating their views and shaping their own image.In the mobile Internet era,the "downward mobility" of new media has created a stage for women to express themselves,and women have started to use We Chat to socialize,Taobao to shop online,and short video platforms to express themselves.However,for many rural women,their rights and status are still in a relatively disadvantaged situation.How rural women,as a digitally disadvantaged group,can use new media to make their voices heard is an issue that deserves the attention of academia and industry.This study takes middle-aged women in village J of city S in Henan province as the research object,and investigates their new media use in the field in terms of several dimensions of media literacy.Through questionnaires,in-depth interviews,participant observation and other research methods,we investigate the degree of new media access and motivation of rural middle-aged women,their awareness and processing of new media information,the types of content produced using new media,the use of new media for self-service,and the current situation of using new media to participate in public affairs,to understand what deficiencies exist in their media literacy,and to propose corresponding countermeasures.The study found that some middle-aged women in J Village can use smartphones to a greater extent,and some of them have already "awakened" to the Internet.They are proactive in acquiring knowledge through new media,receiving digital feedbacks from their offspring,changing from being "deaf talkers" to active communicators,and changing their motivation from self-enjoyment to self-improvement.They use media to maintain family and social relationships,seek self-identity and emotional adjustment in content production,and find new ways to "get rich" when using new media.At the same time,the interviews and observations revealed that there are still some shortcomings in their media literacy.Based on the findings,this study proposes recommendations at the individual,family,social and media levels,with a view to enlightening rural middle-aged women to actively access and use new media,improve media literacy and serve their own development.