The Relationship Between Undergraduates’ View on Internet Censorship, And Their Media Literacy Level

Abstract

Media literacy is shown as an alternative to censorship. It is claimed that while censorship curtails young people’s intellectual development, media literacy helps them to grow up as adults who can think critically. The aim of this study is to determine young adults’ (students in higher education) opinions about censorship and examine the relationship between students’ opinions on censorship and their media literacy level. Participants of this study were undergraduate students of an education faculty of middle sized, rural Turkish university. Research results showed that censorship is less supported among the students who spend more time on the internet and who have high media literacy levels. However, students' support for censorship, assuming that other users may be affected negatively, shows that in this kind of studies, it would be more effective to design researches by considering third person effect.