Media and Information Literacy Repository – South Asia

This report offers a plan of action for how to bring digital and media literacy education into formal and informal settings through a community education movement. In this report, the author's define digital and media literacy as a constellation of life skills that are necessary for full participation in our media-saturated, information-rich society.

The book examines news literacy as a democratic practice, urging readers to move beyond simple fact-checking to critically analyze the structures, institutions, and routines of news media systems. It situates news literacy within critical media literacy, focusing on how news constructs social reality and how power, influence, and gatekeeping shape what becomes news.

This chapter explains how media has evolved from traditional formats like newspapers, radio, and television to digital media technologies such as social media, streaming platforms, smartphones, and online games. It highlights how this shift has changed not only the way we consume information and entertainment, but also how we spend our leisure time, communicate, and form opinions.

The article examines news literacy as an emerging yet conceptually fragmented field, situated at the intersection of media literacy, journalism education, and related disciplines. It discusses the core goal of citizen empowerment, emphasizing critical evaluation of news and informed civic participation.

This article presents a systematic meta-review of the scientific literature discussing the concepts of information literacy, media literacy, and digital literacy. While carrying out a cross analysis of the way in which literature reviews specifically address these three concepts, this article identifies, and articulates a critical analysis of, the main findings from the reviewed texts regarding the conceptual landscape that they cover. This work highlights confusion between the constitutive dimensions of literacies, recurrent difficulties in establishing theoretical articulations between contributions, and operationalization problems in observing and assessing these literacies. These issues are the subject of a discussion grounded in the specific field of media education.

Misinformation on social media has emerged as a major societal concern, as false information often spreads faster than fact-based corrections. Previous studies indicate that fact-checks usually lag behind misinformation, limiting their effectiveness. Research analysing the diffusion of fact-checks on platforms such as Twitter highlights that their spread is influenced by factors including truthfulness ratings, source credibility, political orientation, and user engagement. Studies further reveal that fact-checks with clear and conclusive verdicts are shared more widely, suggesting that message clarity and credibility play a crucial role in countering online misinformation.

Previous studies on media and information literacy highlight the growing importance of social media information literacy (SMIL) in addressing challenges such as information overload and misinformation in digital environments. Scholars emphasise that SMIL is a multidimensional construct encompassing skills related to navigation, evaluation, comprehension, creation, and interaction on social media platforms. Research indicates that higher levels of education and frequent social media use contribute positively to the development of SMIL, while age shows limited influence. Existing literature further suggests that stronger SMIL reduces information overload, which in turn lowers news avoidance and conspiracy thinking, thereby contributing to positive civic engagement and democratic resilience.

The spread of disinformation in the digital environment, particularly after the COVID-19 pandemic, has emerged as a major challenge to democratic societies. Scholars note that this situation has increased the relevance of fact-checking and verification as essential journalistic practices. Existing literature emphasises that digital skills in journalism go beyond technical abilities and include critical thinking, ethical awareness, and scepticism toward information sources. Studies on journalism students reveal a strong awareness of disinformation and a positive attitude toward verification practices, though gaps remain in advanced technical skills such as data journalism and digital tools. Gender differences in digital competencies have also been observed, highlighting the need for improved journalism education and skill-oriented training.

This study examined the relationship between middle school students’ smart media competency and online learning outcomes in an inquiry-based mathematics and science environment. A total of 455 Korean students from grades 7–9 participated, and their smart media competency was measured using the Smart Media Literacy Quotient (SMLQ). Results showed that smart media literacy differed by gender, grade level, subject, and socio-economic status, with female, senior-grade, and non-minority students demonstrating higher competency. Higher smart media literacy was also associated with better inquiry-task performance, while low achievers and students who dropped out exhibited significantly lower smart media literacy and more negative beliefs toward smart media.

The study emphasizes the need for social studies teacher educators to address misinformation and fake news in democratic citizenship education. Guided by the Teacher Education Technology Competencies, it proposes a five-part framework for integrating media literacy into teacher education, including historical, ethical, and practical approaches to analyzing fake news. The study highlights that a comprehensive media literacy approach supports civic reasoning, understanding of political bias, and online civic participation, and stresses the importance of strengthening preservice teachers’ media literacy skills through teacher education programs.

The study examines factors influencing young people’s ability to evaluate online information, focusing on credibility awareness, evaluation practices, and assessment accuracy. Based on data from 2,747 internet users aged 11–18, the findings show that cognitive development, decision-making style, demographics, and digital literacy training all affect online information evaluation, with some unexpected results. The study highlights gaps in youths’ online information literacy and discusses implications for improving digital literacy education and intervention design.

The paper critiques current media literacy programs for focusing mainly on source accuracy and reliability while neglecting how marginalized groups are represented in media. It argues that traditional “objective” news sources often reinforce stereotypes and media injustices. The study proposes an alternative critical media education model that emphasizes representation, power, and social justice. Through pedagogical examples, it shows how combining critical media analysis with media production can help learners challenge biased representations and media injustice, beyond simply verifying factual accuracy.

This article presents a systematic meta-review of the scientific literature discussing the concepts of information literacy, media literacy, and digital literacy. While carrying out a cross analysis of the way in which literature reviews specifically address these three concepts, this article identifies, and articulates a critical analysis of, the main findings from the reviewed texts regarding the conceptual landscape that they cover. This work highlights confusion between the constitutive dimensions of literacies, recurrent difficulties in establishing theoretical articulations between contributions, and operationalization problems in observing and assessing these literacies. These issues are the subject of a discussion grounded in the specific field of media education.

The study investigates how foundational literacy influences online fact-checking behavior among college students, with news literacy acting as a mediator. Findings show that stronger foundational literacy improves fact-checking through enhanced news literacy, but reliance on heuristic (shortcut) thinking weakens this effect. The study highlights the impact of cognitive biases in social media contexts and emphasizes the need for journalism education to integrate critical news literacy, reflective media engagement, and awareness of digital information environments to support responsible digital citizenship.

The paper examines the lack of a clear definition of bias in library literature and critiques existing teaching methods that treat bias as inherently negative and easy to identify. It argues that identifying bias is a complex cognitive process involving recognizing types of bias, establishing an objective baseline, and assessing its impact. Drawing on insights from multiple disciplines, the paper proposes a clear definition of bias and a practical framework for evaluating it. The study emphasizes the need for a nuanced approach to teaching bias identification to better prepare individuals for evaluating information in a post-truth society.

This research investigated the impact of media and information literacy (MIL) on education faculty students’ acquisition of the skills needed to detect fake news. A one-group experimental design was employed with a randomly selected sample of 100 Jordanian undergraduate students. The participants completed one pre-test and two post-tests, each of which consisted of 10 closed-ended questions and one open-ended question on how to detect fake news. The results indicated that studying MIL has an impact on students’ acquisition of the skills needed to detect fake news. The findings also suggested that the methods students employed to identify and detect fake news after studying the MIL course were scientific and well-reasoned. Based on the results, several recommendations are made that will be of value to researchers and workers in this field.

The review highlights the importance of media literacy in combating misinformation by strengthening critical thinking skills. It shows that media literacy programs help individuals evaluate information sources, identify bias, and resist false or misleading content. Evidence indicates that trained individuals are less likely to believe or share misinformation. The review emphasizes effective teaching approaches, such as interactive learning and real-world examples, and stresses the need to integrate media literacy into education to support informed citizenship, public discourse, and democratic engagement in the digital age.

The study examines how information literacy skills and critical thinking strategies influence students’ ability to judge the reliability of internet sources. Using a descriptive correlational design with 500 randomly selected students, it draws on the ACRL framework and UNESCO’s Digital Literacy Global Framework. The findings show that students with strong information literacy and critical thinking skills are better at evaluating accuracy, detecting bias, and identifying misinformation online. The study emphasizes the need to integrate information literacy and critical thinking training into academic curricula to help students become informed and responsible digital citizens.

Marking biased texts effectively increases media bias awareness, but its sustainability across new topics and unmarked news remains unclear, and the role of AI-generated bias labels is untested. This study examines how news consumers learn to perceive media bias from human- and AIgenerated labels and identify biased language through highlighting, neutral rephrasing, and political orientation cues. We conducted two experiments with a teaching phase exposing them to various bias-labeling conditions and a testing phase evaluating their ability to classify biased sentences and detect biased text in unlabeled news on new topics. We find that, compared to the control group, both human- and AI-generated sentential bias labels significantly improve bias classification (p < .001), though human labels are more effective (d = 0.42 vs. d = 0.23). Additionally, among all teaching interventions, participants best detectbiased sentences when taught with biased sentence or phrase labels (p < .001), while politicized phrase labels reduce accuracy. The effectiveness of different media literacy interventions remains independent of political ideology, but conservative participants are generally less accurate (p =.011), suggesting an interaction between political inclinations and bias detection. Our research provides a novel experimental framework into assessing the generalizability of media bias awareness and offer practical implications for designing bias indicators in newsreading platforms and media literacy curricula.

Institutions of higher education continue to emphasize the need to create and develop global citizen graduates who will face challenging global issues in the workforce. A systematic literature review of empirical studies on global citizenship in higher education was conducted to understand the various ways this term is being studied, measured, and operationalized. The process of inclusion and exclusion criteria identified 57 studies. A content analysis revealed global citizenship is being included into higher education through scales of measurement, studying abroad, faculty and student perceptions, coursework, and university programs. The results are discussed in relation to the current literature on global citizenship along with future avenues of research.

Within both academic and policy discourses, the concept of media literacy is being extended from its traditional focus on print and audiovisual media to encompass the internet and other new media. The present article addresses three central questions currently facing the public, policy-makers and academy: What is media literacy? How is it changing? And what are the uses of literacy? The article begins with a definition: media literacy is the ability to access, analyse, evaluate and create messages across a variety of contexts. This four-component model is then examined for its applicability to the internet.

This article considers how media educators can respond to the new challenges and opportunities of the Internet, and of digital media more broadly. It begins by exploring the value and limitations of the notion of ‘literacy’ in this context. It argues that ‘competence-based’ definitions of literacy tend to neglect the social diversity of literacy practices, and to retain a narrow focus on ‘information’, and it suggests that a broader definition of literacy necessarily entails a more critical approach. It then moves on to consider the nature of digital literacy more specifically.

Digital literacy often serves as an ‘umbrella’ term for a range of distinct educational practices which seek to equip the user to function in digitally rich societies. This article explores two of these practices, information literacy and media literacy and through an examination of their histories and practices proposes a future direction for digital literacy. The article consists of three main sections. Section one considers the history of information literacy. The gradual development and refinement of information literacy is traced through a number of key texts and proclamations. Section two is concerned with media literacy. It is noted that media literacy education evolved in three broad strands with each pursuing differing political ends and utilising different techniques. The three approaches are still evident and differences in contemporary media education practices can be understood through this framework.

What society needs from media in the age of digital communication is literacy in understanding media, they ways they operate, and what it means for society.

This study examines how social media functions as a primary channel for accessing and sharing information on current issues. It explores the role of social media in disseminating information on contemporary issues and assesses users’ digital literacy in this context.