A Study on News Media Among High School Students in Tehran

One of the important issues in the field of media literacy is the provision of credible indicators to measure audience literacy. The purpose of this study is to examine news media literacy indicators ("need for cognition", "personal locus", and "knowledge structures") based on James Potter's cognitive model. It then measures students' media literacy and examines the relationship between the variables studied. The statistical population of the study consisted of junior students in Tehran (2018-2019 academic year). The number of 466 sample were selected by multistage cluster sampling method. The research questionnaire was adapted from the study of Maksl, Ashley and Craft and conducted after pre-test and adjustment. Cluster analysis showed that the Potter model is valid for evaluating the students' media literacy in Tehran. Also, media literacy of most respondents was moderate. Analysis of the components of news media literacy showed that "need for cognition" has the most impact on determining the level of news media literacy of the audience. of the sub-components examined ("skepticism", "intrinsic motivation", "reality"), there is a significant relationship between the two latter components and news media literacy. There is also a relationship between "intrinsic motivation" and "need for cognition", but there is no relationship between gender and news media literacy.