The relationship between media literacy level and curricullum of communication vocational scholl students : Elazığ (As an) example

In todays world, rapid advances in science and technology changed communicaton devices as well as means of communication. In addition to its main function of broadcasting news and information, today's media has become more effective in shaping the emotions, thoughts and actions of individuals by influencing their lifestyles. It becomes imperative to increase the individuals' awareness against negative effects of the media that gains wider acceptance in social life. Towards this goal, the most important skill every individual must gain is media literacy. Media literacy can be defined as the skill to differentiate the influential aspect of any content of the media and the ability to evaluate that content with a sense of criticism. This research paper aims to reveal the relationship between media literacy of students of Vocational High Schools in Communication and the schools curricullum as well as the degree of effectiveness of the curricullum in the education of students' media literacy. The research has been done on 153 students studying 10-11-12th grade students in 2017- 2018 Academic Year, in the departments of Journalism, Radio-Television, Public Relations and Organizational Services in Necip Gungor Kisaparmak Vocational and Technical High School located in the Central City of province of Elazig. The work has been done in Relational Screening Model developed by Karaman and Karatas (2009) utilizing "Media Literacy Level Determination Criteria" that comprises seventeen titles with three subchapters. A Statistics Program named SPSS 20.00 has been used for data analysis, also, frequency, percentage, artihmetic mean have been computed, and to evaluate the relation between variables, Chi-Square analysys, Binary-Independent-Variable Sampling T-test and Linear Variance Analysis (LSD) Test has been utilized. The research result has shown that the media literacy level of students' of the Communication Vocational High School is higher than normal. Furthermore, students who closely follow visual and press media as well as those who use internet have shown to possess a higher awareness of media messages and as well as abilities of critical observation and higher self-guidance of the content of these messages. In addition, it has also been determined that ability to react by analyzing content of these media messages as well as their ability of their selfawareness of their influence in the process is somewhat lower. As a result, Curricullum of the Communication Vocational High School has been found to be satisfactory in educating individuals with a sense of media literacy. Keywords: Media Literacy, Communication Vocational High School, Curriculum, Elazıg