More on media literacy

As an addendum to yesterday's post: I've now had more of a look at the report from Ofcom (though I still can't say I've read it cover to cover). It does have some interesting findings (for example, that overall newspapers are less trusted than TV, radio or websites, although in fact this breaks down into a deep level of distrust for tabloids and a higher level of trust for broadsheet newspapers (except as they have all now reduced the size of their sheets, there is going to have to be another name for them...) Additionally, the fact that the sample was more representative than is often the case in such surveys highlights the fact that the internet is not yet as influential as tthose of us who use it every day are tempted to think.

The questions they ask are focused mostly on broadcast and digital media, with emphasis on what features of the medium (e.g. mobile phones or TV) people know about or say they are confident about. Again this is intersting, especially as the responses of different groups (gender/age/ethnicity etc.) are compared. However, it seemed odd to me that they didn't probe the aspect of how people use newspapers (which may not be as complex as DVD recorders, but actually finding your way round a multi-supplement newspaper can be quite confusing (well, I get confused), and I wonder if people know to look for things like content lists, or generally how they cope with newspapers). Apart from in the "news" section, there seemed to be an assumption that media literacy = digital literacy. I suppose, though, that this is where Government's interest is focused, and the pressure to justify/explore this area comes more from digital media companies....
(P.S. Blogger continues deliquent, thus lack of photos. Added next day - Blogger seems to be a bit better, so added photo)