Media literacy among modern school students: The current level and strategies for improvement

Abstract

The article analyzes the results of a study carried out as part of the ‘Sirius. Summer’ all-Russian educational initiative. As digitalization has penetrated all spheres of an individual’s life and the society as a whole, it is important to increase school students’ media literacy and critical thinking. Specifically, school students should learn how to search and verify information in the Internet. Our study seeks to identify school students’ ideas about ‘literate’ media behavior and compare their ideas with the opinion of experts in this area. To collect empirical data, we used a questionnaire survey in which school students gave answers about the features of searching and checking data in the Internet. We also used interviews with media literacy and education experts. The total sample included 304 respondents, three of whom were experts. It was established that experts define media literacy as a multifaceted phenomenon that includes: skills of navigating information flows; critical processing of obtained data; assessment of data reliability and relevance; the ability to resist media manipulations and use media resources critically and meaningfully; and the ability to create high-quality content. The lack of media literacy entails many potential risks for school students: manipulation, propaganda, clip thinking, etc. It was found that almost all school students often use the Internet to search information, but only 34 % always manage to find what they need. 58 % of school students check information for accuracy, mainly comparing it with information from other sources. The overwhelming majority of school students encounter situations when they begin to doubt the accuracy of the data found in the Internet. School students also note that school curriculum pays insufficient attention to the development of media literacy.