Understanding news: The impact of media literacy education on teenagers' news literacy

Media literacy education is presented as an answer to the increasing demand for active citizenship in democratic societies. Consequently, educational programmes that empower teenagers to deal with the opportunities and risks that media pose are developing fast. Against this background, a number of secondary schools in The Netherlands started specific media literacy programmes, but it is unexplored to what extent these programmes are effective in promoting news media literacy among teenagers. To investigate this, a survey was conducted to measure news media literacy levels among more than 1,300 students that did or did not participate in a media literacy programme. Results show that media literacy programmes promote teenagers' news media literacy to a certain extent. However, the contribution of media literacy programmes to news literacy is small. Moreover, findings show that the level of news media literacy was moderate, and that educational level and age were stronger predictors of the student's level of news media literacy than media literacy education itself. There is thus room for improvement with regard to delivering (news) media literacy education across school levels in the Netherlands