Predicting Media Literacy Level of Secondary School Students in Fiji

Abstract

The digital revolution has set a platform for all the information and means of communication to be digitised, thus creating a digital media society. This explosion of digital media requires individuals to have a set of skills and knowledge to survive in this lifelong digital media society. In such a context, many countries around the world are now leveraging on Media Literacy to enhance the necessary skills of individuals and improve upon responsible media engagement. Therefore, predicting media literacy of students is essential so that suitable interventions can be put in place. This paper presents an analysis of Media Literacy status of Year 12 and Year 13 students at randomly selected secondary schools in Fiji, and it presents a set of predictive models using classification techniques. A quantitative study using a reliable survey was conducted to determine the Media Literacy of students using a Likert scale of 1-5. The analysis for this study was using the R software whereby classification algorithms such as Random Forest Classifiers, Decision Trees and Support Vector Machine Algorithm (SVM) were used to build the predictive models. These models will be used to derive appropriate interventions to improve Media Literacy of students. The baseline data from the study provide information on media literacy of Fijian students. The paper concludes with the important attributes that contribute towards an individual's competency on media literacy.

Digital Literacy: A Catalyst for the 21stCentury Education

“…The RapidMiner tool has many algorithms out of which Deep Learning, Support Vector Machine (SVM), Random Forest, and Decision Tree were used for the current study. According to the authors, Reddy et al [48] and Massaro et al [50], predictive algorithms and techniques can also be used to identify the essential or most important predictor variables.…”

“…This indicates that for an individual to possess digital literacy skills, computer literacy is of utmost importance. The researchers, reddy et al [48], Sakarji et al [54],Cacciamani et al [55], Joo [56] and Lai [57] state that an individual must have relevant computing skills to use a given technology and continue using the given technology. Literature also showed over the years that the most common literacy associated with digital literacy was computer literacy [32][7][20] [58].…”

Talismans of Digital Literacy: A Statistical Overview

“…Likewise, media literacy which had been integrated with information literacy in many studies from literature, will be treated as a separate component in this study. Media literacy has become a lifelong process and is defined as the ability to access and create communication signals and recognize the property, wealth, and values underlying the messages (Reddy, Chaudhary & Sharma ., 2019;Ainura et al, 2018). Researchers add that media literacy has become a lifelong process as the use of the Internet for various purposes evolved in the 21st century Sas, Meeus & Simons., 2017).…”

Information literacy: a desideratum of the 21st century

“…The penetration of digital technology and its usage in Fiji is growing incessantly, and these have escalated the number of Internet users to about 50% in the country (Kemp, 2021). Technology has become the backbone of communication, the work environment, and especially the health, government and education sectors in the country (Prasad et al , 2021; Reddy et al , 2019; Kumar and Mohite, 2017). The phenomena of the digital revolution are also impacting the behaviour of the individuals-the younger generation making digital technology part of their daily lives (Johnson et al , 2021; Prasad et al , 2021; Sharma et al , 2019b; Reddy et al , 2017; Sharma and Reddy, 2015).…”

“…Due to the increasing dependence on digital devices and digital platforms, the education sector has evolved from traditional teaching and learning to a technology-driven education (Volpe, 2021; Alenzuela et al , 2019). The authors (Johnson et al , 2021; Prasad et al , 2021; Reddy et al , 2020c; Nand and Sharma, 2019; Reddy et al , 2019; Sharma et al , 2019a, b; Vula, 2019; Raturi, 2018; Reddy et al , 2017; Reddy et al , 2017; Ravindra et al , 2015) have researched on various aspects of technology-driven education. For example, the use of tablets and mobile devices for learning, the use of technology for inclusive education and digital literacy in the Fiji Islands.…”