Media Literacy: Null Curriculum In Higher Education

Media literacy is defined as the ability to access, use, analyze, produce and communicate with media messages in variety of media and also critical thinking about media content. Media literacy has been included in formal curriculums of different countries; however, it is classified as null curriculum in Iran. The aim of this research is to examine the media literacy among students of University of Bojnord.       

This study presents a descriptive survey and uses a self-administered questionnaire with 0.70 reliability score based on alpha Cronbach test. 363 people from 3000 students filled the questionnaires.

the results showed that 99.4% of students’ score of media literacy is lower than average. Only the score of 2 students (0.06%) is high. The score of male is significantly higher than female. Also there is significant relationship between social-economic statues of student in the one hand and the score of media literacy, internet usage rate and social media use in the other hand.  Due to the increase in the penetration rate of the new media among students and role of these media in formation of cultural, religious, political processes and low score of students’ media literacy, it seemed higher education system should exit media literacy from null curriculum and include it under formal or at list implicit curriculum.