Media Literacy and Pre-school Children: A Research of Media Literacy Awareness

Abstract

The necessity of the protection from the adverse effects of the mass media and establishing a conscious interaction causes the concept of media literacy. Media literacy aims to found the communication between the audience and the mass media as a conscious and healthy activity. Television is the most effective mass communication tool on adults and also on children due to its characteristic of auditory and visual transmission of meaning and common usage. It's important the parents to be media literate to protect their children from the damage of television, considering that today children are also seen as a target group and television broadcasting intended for children has increased already. Pre-school children are much more likely to be exposed the negative effects of television. Therefore, preschool children's television watching activity must be under the supervision of parents in terms of healthy development of the children. Based on the concept of media literacy, this study examines the consciousness of the 0-3 year children's parents, who are the determinant factor of the child's relation with television. The method of the study is indepth interview. The main purpose of this study is to determine the parents' knowledge of media literacy and also their consciousness about the criterias as the content of the television programmes, age appropriateness and limiting the television watching time. According the evaluation of discussions, we can say respondents didn't have any knowledge about the concept of "media literacy". In any case, they have a tendency to select the programmes or the chanels which their children's watching. Especially they prefer thematic chanel for their children. On the other hand while they are watching television they haven't conscious to inturrupt their children as a passive televiewer. The sum of evoluation the respondents have not been conscious about media literacy and needs to be given training about it.