Media and Information Literacy Repository – South Asia

In knowledge society, there is currently a call for cultivating a combination of media literacy and information literacy. This, however, requires cooperation from these two separate fields of study, and uncertainty regarding their boundaries hinders a smooth merger. It is unclear whether they are subsets of each other or separate entities. In this study, we have explored the relationship between these two fields by empirically mapping out their territories and discussing their similarities and differences. We have made use of the Web of Science database to delineate the content and boundary of these two fields. Our findings from 1956 to 2012 show that the two fields have different authors, university affiliations, and journals; they also differ in terms of academic origin, scope, and social concern. Information literacy has a closer tie to library science, while media literacy is more related to media content, media industry, and social effects. Due to their different academic orientations, the two fields adopt different analytical approaches. We have found that media literacy is not a subset of information literacy as some scholars have suggested, although the two fields have similarities. They share the same goal, and their publications overlap in terms of subject areas, countries of origin, and titles. The two fields could find common ground by cooperating together to contribute to the promotion of new literacy in knowledge societies.

Purpose: The aim of this study was a comparative study of media literacy curriculum policy in the educational system of leading countries and Iran. Methodology: The approach of the research was qualitative approach and the method used in it was comparative-analytical method. The research population in this study included all valid scientific documents, including books, articles in specialized journals related to media literacy, from which the works related to the subject were selected using purposive sampling method and appropriate to the research objectives of the case. Were analyzed and data were collected by documentary method, Descriptive analysis method was used in data analysis. Based on the research question, a framework for data analysis was considered. Based on this framework, the required data from available resources were selected, organized, and then their similarities and differences were identified and compared and interpreted. Findings: Based on the results of this study, the concerns and views on content, necessities and goals of media literacy in different countries are largely similar and educational planners try to maintain their cultural identity in the use of different media. . The results also showed that media literacy has been considered as one of the most effective monitoring tools in the countries. Also, according to the results of the research, the most important differences between the selected countries and Iran in this regard was that the goal of these countries is to institutionalize the media literacy curriculum in an organized manner and in the form of codified policies and long-term plans, but in Iran. Although this issue has been emphasized in the upstream documents, due to the lack of sufficient infrastructure, lack of culture appropriate to the age of technology and teachers not being familiar with this knowledge, these conditions have not been provided and implementation in schools has been unsuccessful. Several years of implementation have not yet led to a successful indigenous approach and model for implementing this skill in schools. Conclusion: The results showed that the concerns and views on the content, necessities and goals of media literacy in different countries are largely similar and educational planners try to maintain their cultural identity in the use of different media.

As new technologies and information delivery systems emerge, the way in which individuals search for information to support research, teaching, and creative activities is changing. To understand different aspects of researchers’ information-seeking behavior, this article surveyed 2,063 academic researchers in natural science, engineering, and medical science from five research universities in the United States. A Web-based, in-depth questionnaire was designed to quantify researchers’ information searching, information use, and information storage behaviors. Descriptive statistics are reported.

This study investigates the impact of information technology (IT) on productivity and collaboration patterns in academe. Our data combine information on the diffusion of two noteworthy innovations in IT—BITNET and the Domain Name System (DNS)—with career-history data on research-active life scientists. We analyzed a random sample of 3,114 research-active life scientists from 314 U.S. institutions over a 25-year period and find that the availability of BITNET on a scientist’s campus has a positive effect on his or her productivity and collaborative network. Our findings also support the hypothesis of a differential effect of IT across subgroups of the scientific labor force. Women scientists and those working at nonelite institutions benefit more from the availability of IT in terms of overall research output and an increase in the number of new coauthors they work with than do men or individuals at elite institutions. These results suggest that IT is an equalizing force, providing a greater boost to productivity and more collaboration opportunities for scientists who are more marginally positioned in academe

The need to understand authors’ motivations for creating links between university web sites is addressed by a survey of a random collection of 414 such links from the ac.uk domain. A classification scheme was created and applied to this collection. Obtaining inter-classifier agreement as to the single main link creation cause was very difficult because of multiple potential motivations and the fluidity of genre on the Web. Nevertheless, it was clear that, whilst the vast majority, over 90%, was created for broadly scholarly reasons, only two were equivalent to journal citations. It is concluded that academic web link metrics will be dominated by a range of informal types of scholarly communication. Since formal communication can be extensively studied through citation analysis, this provides an exciting new window through which to investigate a facet of a previously obscured type of communication activity

This paper analyzes the impact of academic inbreeding in relation to academic research, and proposes a new conceptual framework for its analysis. We find that mobility (or lack of) at the early research career stage is decisive in influencing academic behaviors and scientific productivity. Less mobile academics have more inward oriented information exchange dynamics and lower scientific productivity.The analysis also indicates that the information exchange and scientific productivity of academics that changed institutions only once do not differ substantially from that of ‘‘mobile inbred academics’’. This emphasizes the need for mobility throughout scientific and academic careers and calls for policies to curtail academic inbreeding.

The information seeking behavior of academic scientistsis being transformed by the availability of electronicresources for searching, retrieving, and reading scholarlymaterials. A census survey was conducted of academicscience researchers at the University of North Carolina atChapel Hill to capture their current information seekingbehavior. Nine hundred two subjects (26%) completedresponses to a 15-minute Web-based survey. The surveyquestions were designed to quantify the transition toelectronic communications and how this affects differentaspects of information seeking. Significant changes ininformation seeking behavior were found, includingincreased reliance on web based resources, fewer visitsto the library, and almost entirely electronic communica-tion of information. The results can guide libraries andother information service organizations as they adapt tomeet the needs of today’s information searchers. Simpledescriptive statistics are reported for the individual ques-tions. Additionally, analysis of results is broken out bybasic science and medical science departments. The survey tool and protocol used in this study have been adopted for use in a nationwide survey of the information-seeking behavior of academic scientists

The essay reflects on how visual media and visual literacy have evolved since the publication of the author’s earlier book Visual “Literacy”: Image, Mind, and Reality (1994). It focuses on how technological and cultural changes have transformed the way people create, share, and interpret images. The article highlights two major technological developments that have reshaped visual communication. The first is the advancement of digital image manipulation and computer-generated photorealistic images. Modern editing tools make it easier to alter photographs or create highly realistic digital images, which makes detecting visual manipulation or fraud more difficult. This change raises concerns about the reliability and authenticity of visual information in media.

The study examines how visual literacy is practiced, taught, and understood in higher education. It serves as an introduction to a special issue that focuses on the role of visual literacy in university teaching and research. The article argues that visual literacy has become increasingly important because modern communication and knowledge production rely heavily on images, visual media, and multimodal forms of expression. Universities therefore need to help students develop the ability to interpret, analyze, and create visual content, not just textual information.

The study discusses the concept of digital visual literacy (DVL) and its growing importance in modern education and everyday life. Digital visual literacy refers to the ability to both understand and create visual information using digital technologies, such as images, graphics, presentations, and data visualizations produced through computers. The paper explains that DVL has become an essential skill in many areas of daily life and professional work. People need these skills to critically interpret images in news media, use digital cameras, design websites, create presentations, and visualize scientific data. Because visual communication is increasingly digital and multimedia-based, the ability to analyze and produce digital visuals is now a key component of literacy in many fields.

This book explores the concept, debates, and challenges surrounding visual literacy, particularly in the fields of art, media studies, and education. The book brings together contributions from different scholars who examine whether visual literacy can truly be considered a form of “literacy” comparable to reading and writing, and how people learn to interpret and understand visual images. The contributors discuss what it means to “read” images and whether the skills used to interpret visual material—such as paintings, photographs, diagrams, and digital images—can be systematically taught and learned.

The article discusses the growing importance of visual literacy. Felten explains that visual literacy involves the ability to understand the meaning of visual images, evaluate their credibility and persuasive techniques, and communicate ideas effectively through visual forms. The article emphasizes that images are not neutral; they carry cultural, political, and rhetorical meanings that viewers must learn to critically interpret.

The article examines how privacy concerns, trust, and privacy literacy influence the use of privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) on the Internet. It focuses particularly on the anonymization service Tor (The Onion Router), which allows users to browse the web while protecting their identity and personal data. The study builds on the Internet Users’ Information Privacy Concerns (IUIPC) model, a framework commonly used to measure how privacy concerns affect people’s willingness to use online technologies. However, the authors argue that this model does not fully apply to privacy-enhancing technologies because these tools are specifically designed to reduce privacy risks, which changes how trust and risk perceptions influence user behavior.

The article critically examines online privacy literacy and its role in shaping how individuals understand and respond to privacy issues in the digital environment. It argues that current debates about online privacy are largely based on liberal theory, which defines privacy mainly as protection from external influences such as governments, corporations, or other individuals.

The article examines the concept of privacy literacy in the context of personalized and direct marketing, where companies increasingly collect and process consumers’ personal data to deliver targeted advertising and interactive marketing strategies. As digital marketing becomes more data-driven, concerns have grown about how businesses can use personal information without violating consumers’ privacy. The paper introduces privacy literacy as a concept that explains how consumers understand and respond to the processing of their personal data.

The article examines how privacy literacy training influences children’s understanding of online privacy and their behavior when sharing personal information on the Internet. It focuses on children aged 9–13 years, who frequently encounter requests from online services to disclose personal data but often lack awareness of the commercial value of their data and the potential privacy risks involved.

This study examined the impact of three dimensions of digital literacy on privacy-related online behaviors: (a) familiarity with technical aspects of the Internet, (b) awareness of common institutional practices, and (c) understanding of current privacy policy

The article investigates the relationship between online privacy literacy (OPL) and Internet users’ privacy concerns, particularly within the European context. Privacy literacy is defined as users’ knowledge about privacy rights, data protection regulations, and strategies for protecting personal information online.

The article examines privacy literacy on social media and how it relates to the privacy divide among different user groups. Privacy literacy refers to users’ ability to understand privacy risks, manage personal information, and apply privacy controls while using social media platforms. The study investigates whether demographic factors such as gender, ethnicity, and prior experience with privacy tools influence individuals’ level of privacy literacy.

The article discusses the growing importance of privacy literacy in the digital age, particularly the role of libraries and librarians in educating users about protecting their personal information online. Traditionally, libraries focused on safeguarding the privacy of patrons’ records, such as borrowing histories and library usage. However, with the rise of the internet and social media, privacy concerns have expanded to include the creation, sharing, and ownership of digital information.

This paper examines Wikipedia’s participatory governance model as a framework for informing European digital public sphere development. Through analysis of Wikipedia’s two-decade experience with community-driven content moderation, reliable source verification, and decentralized decision-making, the study demonstrates how public-interest platforms can maintain information quality while fostering democratic participation. Drawing on Henry Jenkins’ participatory culture theory, the research shows how Wikipedia’s collaborative editing processes naturally develop users’ media literacy competencies through active engagement rather than passive consumption. The paper analyses Wikipedia’s recent regulatory experiences under the EU Digital Services Act and European Media Freedom Act, highlighting both compliance challenges and opportunities for policy learning. The findings suggest that adapting Wikipedia’s model could inform the design of a European digital public sphere that prioritizes information quality, user empowerment, and democratic discourse over commercial engagement metrics

Conceptualisations of media literacy often include the dimension of the media users’ participation in media regulation or, more general, media governance. In doing so the expectation is stressed, that beyond the ability to participate in media-related communicative practices, literacy would also mean that media users engage in forming the technical, political, and economic conditions for communication processes. However, this aspect seems to be widely neglected when it comes to empirical research on patterns and levels of media literacy. As a consequence, talking about media users as actors of media governance sounds unfamiliar and somehow strange: Media politics and media regulation are rather done for media users and their interests – or sometimes rather against their interests – but almost never by media users. This article proposes a conceptual clarification of the potential roles of the audience and discusses them with regard to concrete instruments that could help to strengthen this aspect of media literacy and thus the role of audiences in media governance.

We conducted a study of Australia’s media content regulation system in the context of three major Federal Government reviews of media law and policy (Australian Law Reform Commission, 2012; Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, 2012; Finkelstein, 2012). The current system understands governance as the work of government and industry, and either minimises or overlooks the role of users, the context of platforms, and the scope of participation. In this article, we assess the weaknesses in the current framework and look both critically and pragmatically at the role users can play in media content governance. By drawing on the Australian situation as a case study, we consider the wider problem of governance within networked media spaces and the tensions between users, algorithms, platforms, industries, and nation states. Finally, we argue for the development of stronger theoretical model of ‘civic media governance’, based on principles of radical pluralism that can better account for dissent and dissonance.

This article discusses the dominant metaphor of infodemic, the role of platforms and their policies. In understanding the spread of Covid-19 misinformation as an informational epidemic, we are led to construct the problem as one of viral spread. Virality, however, has been conceptualised as a key attribute of social media platforms. A tension therefore emerges between to encouraging good virality while limiting bad virality. To examine how platforms have dealt with this , the article analyses the policies of two platforms, Facebook and YouTube, alongside the EU Code of Practice which they have both signed. The analysis reveals that they focus on the circulation of mis/disinformation, developing an apparatus of security around it. This consists of a set of strategies, techno-material tools for the enforcement of the strategies, measures for disciplining users, and procedures for legitimating and re adjusting the whole apparatus. However, this apparatus is not fit for the purpose of addressing mis/disinformation for two reasons: firstly, its primary objective is to sustain the platforms and not to resolve the problem of mis/disinformation; secondly it obscures the question of production of mis/disinformation. Ultimately, addressing mis/disinformation in a comprehensive manner requires a more thorough and critical social inquiry.

It examine the Role of Media Literacy in the Governance Reform Agenda