Media educajtion : capabilities and constraints

Abstract EN

According to the ‘Modality Judgment’ model most of the time viewers are not provoked to think critically of media messages especially those disguised in entertainment as critical thinking may interfere with “following the narrative, emotional involvement and the pleasure of the experience.” This research paper aims at exploring the average level of media literacy for Egyptian university students and to what extent media education can improve students’ reception of media messages and their ability to decode and analyze them.

Sixty students in television drama class at a private university in Cairo participated in this study.

Over a period of three weeks, students viewed a number of eight movies that deah with foreign occupation, injustice, and government corruption.

A pre-test and a post-test were used to measure any change in students ability to process films’ content, to add their own interpretations and opinions to the actual information, and to make inferences about the real world