Development and exploration of news media literacy scales in Taiwan

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to explore how the promotion of news media literacy positively affects media criticism as well as the control and judgment of self-behavior. Potter developed the Chinese News Media Literacy Scale (NMLS), based on his theoretical framework of media literacy cognition. Potter is an outstanding scholar in media literacy. Senior high school students in Taiwan validated the NMLS for reliability and validity. The NMLS consists of 45 questions covering four topics: intellectual skills, personal locus, media knowledge structure, and news context reading. The Chinese version of the NMLS demonstrated good reliability, considerable validity, appropriate discrimination, and an appropriate level of difficulty, making it suitable for Taiwanese students. Female respondents exhibited higher news media literacy than their male counterparts. Public senior high school students showed higher news media literacy compared to those from private schools. The time spent reading news positively correlates with improvements in news media literacy. The findings indicate that news media literacy education significantly enhances students' critical understanding of news and media literacy skills, with varying effects across different genders and types of schools. The limitation of the study is that the sample mainly comes from Taiwan, which may not fully represent other cultural contexts. The findings can guide educational policy in schools, particularly in designing and implementing news media education curricula, taking into account the differences in gender and school types. This research expands the literature on news media literacy, especially in terms of scale development and its application to a specific cultural context like Taiwan, and introduces new insights into the impact of gender and school type on media literacy.