Tags: China, journalist；media literacy；Evaluation Index System
Media literacy level can be measured through qualitative and quantitative research. In order to properly investigate media literacy ability of Chinese journalists at the age of social media, a scientific and objective evaluation system is very important. For this reason, the research group from South China Normal University tried to construct an evaluation index system of Chinese journalists’ media literacy. The study is presented as follows.
(Thematic authors of this index:
Zhang Xuebo, Professor, South China Normal University, China.
Li Surui, Graduate student, South China Normal University, China.)
Step 1: Design a Questionnaire
The first-level index of journalists’ new media literacy is assumed as five indicators: media cognitions, media emotions, media skills, and media aesthetics and media ethics, and then 19 secondary indicators have been developed. Based on those 5 indicators and 19 secondary indicators, we designed a questionnaire on Chinese Journalist’ media literacy evaluation system, and sent it to university professors of Journalism and Communication in China, media experts by e-mail. The number of questionnaires is 72, receiving a total of 32 questionnaires, and the invalid questionnaire is 0, the questionnaire was 100% effective.
Firstly, the questionnaire scales Cronbach α coefficient (Cronbach Alpha) is 0.744, significantly higher than the 0.7 level. The results indicate that the internal consistency of this scale is an affirmative.
Secondly, the questionnaire validity analysis would be used KMO method. The results indicate that KMO is 0.515, greater than 0.5, indicating that the construct validity of the scale is acceptable. So, we can do the factor analysis. In addition, Bartlett’s test of sphericity is 161.998, df 91, Sig. 0.000, it represent that the groups have a common correlation matrix factors. The results also indicate that the questionnaire is suitable for doing factor analysis
Thirdly, principal component analysis was made to extract relevant factors from the samples. The outputs show that the front five factors was 71.669% cumulative contribution, more than 70%, to explain most of the information index. The extracted five main components establish the original factor loading matrix, and at the same time we delete some incompatible indications. Through the second factor analysis and cluster analysis testing, the results are generally the same as the first factor analysis, The final Media Literacy Evaluation System includes 5 indicators and 13 secondary indicators.
Step 2: Construct the index of Chinese journalist’ media literacy evaluation system
With questionnaires filled by experts to re-assign the various indicators, the researchers constructed the core first-level and second-level index of the media literacy evaluation system. The first-level index have 5 indicators, the second-level index have 13 indicators. The first-level indicators include media emotions, media skills, media selections, media uses and media recognitions. By factor contribution rate and the accumulated contribution rate, we can calculate index weight of each level indicator. The media literacy evaluation index system and weight of journalist in the following table.
| First Grade indexes | Proportion | Secondary indexes | Explain of The Index | proportion |
| Media Emotion | 30% | Media organization cognition | The understanding of media organization structure, financial situation, the competition among the various media, the commercial and professional of media organization. | 5 |
| Aesthetics | Aesthetics is able to master some media aesthetic, to identify and evaluate the standard of beauty, to form the correct aesthetic concept. | 4 | ||
| Expressing beauty | media will be presented the reality in the form of aesthetic, in order to reduce significantly media persuade tendency in the process of news communication. | 1 | ||
| Appreciate aesthetic | it is to use different skills, language and aesthetic effect in the different media products to analyzed | 2 | ||
| Pass the beauty | To know the communication aesthetic in media production process, pay attention to the connotation of news information. | 3 | ||
| Media skill | 19% | Media creation skills | the professional standards and the professional literacy, focus on the concrete operating level | 1 |
| Media communication skills | with the help of media platform, according to the audience demand, communicate the news timely and effectively, to maximize the communication effect skills. | 2 | ||
| Media selection | 18% | Media language cognition | a kind of cognition of visual language, auditory language and other communication symbols. | 2 |
| Media audience cognition | an whole judgement about the audiences, like audience psychology, audience preference, audience feedback. | 1 | ||
| Media usage | 17% | Media usage cognition | To obtain information from the media and have the skill which the usage of media, the production technology and process of media product, especially the basic cogniton and use of knowledge in the development of new media. | 1 |
| Media information production cognition | It is how to product the news information with connotation, reproduce the social reality and passed to the public. | 2 | ||
|
Media identification |
16% |
Media demand intention |
It contains the demand for media text, the demand for using different media forms, the demand to adapt the audience’s personalization custom news, after the demand for media, we can find if the journalist have the media contact or not. |
2 |
|
Media contact consciousness |
It is not only means the contact of traditional editorial business, but also the contact with voice , video and mobile media in all media ear. The media contact in mobile internet era in an important evaluation criterion of journalist media literacy ability. |
1 |
Conclusion
In the end, we can construct an evaluation index system for journalists’ media literacy abilities in the new media environment, and provide relevant decision-making reference for the education sectors, media agencies, community groups, government decision-making departments. However, the research also has some shortcomings.
- This research on the evaluation index system of Chinese journalists’ media literacy only stays in the descriptive level.
- To make the data more representatives, the samples need to be enlarged. In addition, the research has only divided two level indexes. In the further research, we may divide more detailed index.
This article is originally composed by Prof. Liu Jing
Associate Professor, South China Normal University
