Scientific literacy and media literacy: how college students believe pseudoscience in news
| Autor: | Wang, Chen Yi, 王貞懿 |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2011 |
| Druh dokumentu: | 學位論文 ; thesis |
| Popis: | 98 The current study explores the roles of scientific literacy and media literacy in how people understand or believe the pseudoscientific content in news. Scientific literacy has been considered as an important concept in science communication research for it may explain how well people are able to understand the knowledge in news content, while media literacy is the ability of an audience to think independently and critically of the information provided by media. Past students, however, have not yet suggested a complete picture of how scientific literacy and media literacy together influence audiences’ processing of science news. Past studies have also not yet widely explored pseudoscience in media or its impact on audiences. Pseudoscience subjects such as astrology and medical quackery can be easily found in media content today, even news, with exaggerated or unproved claims. It remains unknown how publics receive such media information, particularly since audiences have preexisting beliefs relevant to these pseudoscience subjects that would be influential. Thus, the present study is aimed to depict the relationship of science literacy and media literacy in reading pseudoscientific news with consideration of audiences’ pseudoscientific beliefs. A survey on college students in Taiwan was conducted with a nation-wide stratified sample of 1190. The results first showed that college students are at mediate levels of scientific literacy and media literacy, and the scores of their pseudo-scientific beliefs are not low, particularly on the pseudoscientific subjects that have a marketing theme or a commercial purpose. The findings also showed that scientific literacy is positively related to media literacy and not significantly related to pseudoscientific beliefs; media literacy is negatively related to pseudo-scientific beliefs. In addition, the study found that media use is positively related to pseudoscientific beliefs; especially the viewing of television. Hierarchical regression analyses further showed that media literacy and pseudo-scientific beliefs have significant effects on how pseudoscience content in news is believed. The implications of the findings and recommendations for future studies are discussed at the end. |
| Databáze: | Networked Digital Library of Theses & Dissertations |
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