News Programmes under the Novel Coronavirus Pandemic and Media Literacy- From the Case Study of FCT

Abstract

This paper summarises the philosophy, activities and approaches toward media literacy at the FCT Media Literacy Research Institute. At the FCT, we consider issues related to media as issues of public interest and have been studying them from the perspective of citizens (i.e. the media audience). A critical approach to media literacy is based on definitions, basic concepts, media analysis models and learning through dialogue. As a case study, we performed quantitative analyses on people who appeared in news programmes during the novel coronavirus pandemic, following the method used in the Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP) 2020. The attributes of people we analysed include their gender, professional and social status, whether their remarks were covered in the news story (“with remarks”) or whether they appeared only as visual subjects (“visual only”), and the subject of the news story in which they appeared. The study has revealed asymmetric representation of gender in terms of the number of people who appeared in the news stories, the coverage of their remarks and their professional/social status. We believe that citizens’ critical media awareness and proactive communication are a step forward towards information societies that are people-centred, inclusive and equitable, as stated in the Civil Society Declaration.