Media literacy Needs of Undergraduate Students

Nowadays, diverse media affected on intellectual processes and decision making of audiences by varieties modes. Therefore, media literacy competence is one of the requirements of citizens in media age. The aim of this study is to determine the educational needs of students in media literacy according to their exiting media literacy status. This study conducted in two stages, which at first of them, to measure students' media literacy, descriptive and survey research method was used. From 7087 undergraduate students with using Stratified random method 481 students were selected from 9 colleges and responded to media literacy researcher made questioner. The face and content validity of this tool obtained using seven deliberate expertise opinions and its reliability obtained 0/84. For analysis of data, single group T test and Friedman test used. In the second phase of study, survey method used which 30 academic experts and senior executive in the field media literacy participated in research. These participants were selected by using available sampling and criterion-centric sampling and for data gathering, an open-ended questioner with three questions for determining the educational needs associated with media literacy used. The data of this stage analyzed using the agreement coefficient. The results indicated: the status of students in some aspects of media literacy such as critical using and critical production is not suitable. The main needs of students are in the field of use, analysis and evaluation of media messages, recognition and reviewing media, understanding of media function in specific socio- cultural context, the art of writing and semantic skills, and familiarity with various software for message production. Therefore, some suggestions have been made for establishing media literacy curriculum in higher education.