The Role of Social Networks in Promoting Media Literacy

The principal objective of this paper is to study the role of social networks in promoting and developing media literacy. In this article, the development of media literacy in interpersonal communication actions level in social media, especially Facebook and Twitter, is examined.
In the literature review of this article, the theory about participatory communication is considered. Also the five -dimension pattern is derived from media literacy based on Jeff Scher and Len Masterman theory and interpersonal communication as one of dimensions of media literacy is examined in order to analyze the role of interpersonal communication actions for developing media literacy.
The research method used in this paper is qualitative content analysis due to the subject. In this paper 10 statuses of Facebook users are examined. These statuses are about media literacy.
The findings revealed that Facebook user's interpersonal communication actions in their statuses can eventually improve their media literacy in five dimensions namely transparency, language, decoding, representation and motivation.