Media and Information Literacy Repository – South Asia

This case study examines the use of film, technology, and creative teaching methods to improve students’ understanding of literature in a high school English classroom. By integrating films, music, art, and computer-based activities with literary study, the approach encourages critical thinking and creative engagement. The findings show that students remained more connected to readings, demonstrated improved academic performance, and responded more actively to literature. The study highlights the effectiveness of visual and auditory learning methods in creating an interactive and inclusive educational environment.

This book serves as a guide for high school English teachers to understand and teach visual literacy through film. It explains key filmmaking techniques such as composition, lighting, editing, sound, and rhythm, and examines how films shape audience responses. The book also provides practical classroom strategies, activities, and exercises for integrating visual literacy into English education. By combining film analysis with teaching methods, it promotes critical viewing skills and a deeper understanding of cinema as a form of communication and artistic expression.

This study examines how Bollywood films portray the Indian education system through qualitative textual analysis of 17 films. The research highlights themes such as political influence, social inequality, corruption, teacher exploitation, and the commercialization of education. It shows how Bollywood uses storytelling to raise awareness about systemic issues while promoting values like motivation, resilience, and hard work. The study concludes that Bollywood shapes public understanding of education by encouraging critical reflection on social realities and presenting education as a means of personal empowerment and social transformation.

This paper explores feminist film pedagogy as a method for developing gender-critical awareness in Indian undergraduate English classrooms. It argues that cinema can help students critically engage with visual culture, gender representation, and patriarchal media structures. Through case studies from a college in Kerala, the study demonstrates how films, Bollywood songs, and OTT series improve students’ visual literacy, feminist understanding, and analytical skills. The paper proposes a practical framework for integrating feminist film pedagogy into English literature curricula in India.

This study examines awareness of film literacy among young audiences in India and explores the influence of films in the digital age. It defines film literacy as the ability to understand and critically analyze films based on their technical and narrative elements. With increasing access to global cinema through the internet, the paper emphasizes the importance of educating viewers about informed content selection. Using a survey method and questionnaire, the research investigates youngsters’ understanding of film literacy and the impact films have on their attitudes and viewing choices.

The article argues that cinema should not be viewed only as entertainment but also as an educational and intellectual tool. Focusing on Morocco, it emphasizes the need to include film studies in education to help audiences critically understand and select films. The study highlights the importance of developing a constructive cinematic culture from an early age.

This article examines film literacy initiatives in Spain operating outside formal education systems. By analyzing 65 organizations involved in cinema pedagogy, the study identifies the canon of films and directors promoted to students in non-formal educational contexts. The findings reveal a dominance of North American and French cinema, limited representation of Spanish national cinema, and an absence of films addressing Spain’s historical memory. The study highlights the cultural implications of film education practices and questions the diversity and inclusiveness of cinematic literacy promoted within Spanish educational initiatives.

This study explores the role of cinema and audio visual media in strengthening disaster literacy and risk communication in Indonesia through a systematic literature review. The findings show that films, documentaries, animations, and digital media effectively communicate disaster awareness, preparedness, and mitigation practices. Cinema functions not only as an educational tool but also as a cultural medium that fosters empathy, collective awareness, and community engagement. The study highlights the potential of audiovisual media in disaster education, participatory governance, and social resilience while identifying gaps in evaluating long-term behavioural impacts.

This article examines film literacy in Europe through the findings of the 2012 European Experts’ Study on film literacy. It discusses two approaches to film education: as a universal cultural entitlement and as a tool for developing film audiences. Based on research across 32 European countries, the study explores film education practices, the cultural significance of cinema, and the relationship between film literacy and media literacy. It also reflects on the opportunities and limitations of digital technologies in shaping contemporary film education and audience engagement.

This study highlights the growing importance of emerging literacies in contemporary education, particularly film literacy. It argues that teachers must develop new skills to address the demands of a digital and information-rich society. Film literacy is presented as a multidisciplinary and multicultural form of literacy that enables critical interpretation of visual languages and media texts. The paper emphasizes the need to integrate film literacy into higher education to strengthen semiotic understanding, critical thinking, and communication skills required for navigating complex media environments in the 21st century.

This study discusses the “Physics in Films” project developed to increase student interest in physical science through the use of popular films. The programme integrates scientific concepts with movie analysis across various genres, including superheroes and pseudoscience. Findings show that film-based teaching improves engagement, flexibility in instruction, and understanding of scientific principles. The project demonstrates how cinema can serve as an effective educational tool to reduce science illiteracy and make complex scientific concepts more accessible and engaging for students.

This study examines the impact of a film literacy programme conducted in six European Union countries to improve students’ understanding of cinema and attitudes toward European films. The findings reveal limited changes in film preferences but significant improvement in students’ knowledge of film production and cinematic expression. Attitudes toward national and European cinema became more positive, although programme outcomes varied across cultural contexts. The study highlights the importance of culturally sensitive approaches in developing effective cross-cultural film literacy programmes.

This paper explores cinema as a universal visual language with its own grammar, conventions, and techniques of meaning-making. It argues that understanding film requires both visual and aural literacy, similar to how print literacy requires recognition of linguistic patterns. The study examines cinematic language, editing, and emotional communication in film narratives.

Children, Film and Literacy examines the relationship between children’s engagement with film and the development of literacy practices. Becky Parry argues that films provide imaginative and narrative spaces through which children construct identities, participate in storytelling, and develop understandings of narrative structure and visual language. Drawing on research conducted in schools and children’s everyday cultural experiences, the book highlights how film influences play, communication, and creative expression.

The dynamics of digital communication literacy today cannot be separated from technological advances, also every person or institution/government or other private institution is always faced with the development of human resources. Moreover, related to the planned production, this shows the ability to process marketing propositions and advertisements, both commercial advertisements and public service advertisements (PSA) in the midst of strengthening communication literacy itself. This research was conducted using descriptive qualitative research methodology, namely digging up data by direct observation, and interviews with those who can be used as data sources. The purpose of this research is to provide a clear description of the Effect of Marketing Promotion on Public Service Advertising on Strengthening Digital Communication Literacy, as well as to contribute ideas to policy makers and other researchers in the future, thereby providing significant benefits to these problems.

This study looks at how Public Service Announcements (PSAs) affect students at University Malaysia Sarawak's Faculty of Education, Language and Communication (FELC) in terms of cyber wellness and digital citizenship (UNIMAS). An online questionnaire was used to gather data from 82 undergraduate students as part of a quantitative study design that used a descriptive survey approach. Students' exposure to PSAs, attitudes, social norms, and digital activity were all examined using descriptive statistics and multiple regression analysis. The results indicate that students exhibit good digital citizenship behaviors and a high degree of awareness of cyber wellbeing. Students' digital conduct was found to be strongly influenced by attitudes about social norms and cyber health. However, exposure to PSAs by itself did not significantly alter behavior, suggesting that PSAs have an indirect impact on behavior through social influence and internal views. The most popular platform for coming across PSAs was found to be TikTok. This study offers information for creating more successful initiatives to promote cyber wellness among college students.

While health communication campaigns seek to encourage and promote healthy behaviors, they are not always successful. Health communication efforts may fail for several reasons, such as viewers experiencing excessive freedom threats and reactance. This study (n = 201) proposes and demonstrates that descriptive norm appeals in health PSAs can indirectly lead to enhanced behavioral intentions toward the message advocacy via reducing perceived freedom threats, inhibiting psychological reactance, and improving message credibility. However, this serial mediation was only found for message viewers with relatively low media literacy skills – precisely, who did not show considerable critical thinking toward media content. For participants who reported a high level of critical thinking toward media content, the use of descriptive norm appeals did not decrease freedom threats, nor did it indirectly affect behavioral intentions. The findings of this study contribute to the theory of psychological reactance and norms-based research. Both theoretical and practical implications are provided for health communication scholars and practitioners.

Partisans are poor judges of news content, rating neutral content as biased against their views (the hostile media perception) and forgiving biased content when it favors their side. This study tests whether a short news media literacy public service announcement (PSA) appearing before political programming can influence credibility and hostility ratings of the program and program host. Our findings suggest that a media literacy PSA can be effective, but its impact depends on the position of the news program and on the political ideology of the viewers. In this case, the media literacy PSA only influenced conservatives’ evaluations of the political program, improving perceptions of a neutral or congruent (conservative) host while further depressing ratings of an incongruent (liberal) host. Liberals’ evaluations of the program were unaffected by the PSA. Implications for media literacy messaging and information processing are discussed.

The purpose of the current study is to evaluate public service announcements (PSA’s): how visual and verbal rhetoric modes present an intended message. Differences in modes suggest different effects, and rhetoric promotes the power to persuade and convince others. As the growing interest in social media use, PSAs become a complex example of multimodal communication: combining verbal texts and visual images establish natural language in this world. The study looked at the question, how the combinations of texts and images work. Within this scope, Kress & van Leeuwen’s Visual Grammar theory and Halliday’s SFL theory were applied along with SF-MDA suggested by O’Halloran & Lim-Fei. The method of analytic descriptive qualitative allows the study to investigate and explain the issue elaborately. The results of this study show the combinations of all resources potentially motivate interactive participants to do the action after the investment of knowledge. Due to the increased importance of social movement, it is estimated that the findings potentially contribute to represent values intended by both public and private sectors.

In this study, we test the effectiveness of a short news media literacy message with audiences who differ in their media literacy education. We manipulate whether individuals are exposed to a news media literacy public service announcement (PSA) immediately before viewing a political program among two groups: students enrolled in media education courses versus students in a non-media course. Findings suggest that the ability of media literacy messages to influence students’ processing of the subsequent political program is conditioned by their preexisting media literacy education. This study provides insights for considering how classroom and non-classroom media literacy interventions can work together to improve media literacy.

Moving media literacy messages out of the classroom and onto the Internet, where much news consumption happens, offers an opportunity to extend media literacy education to a wider public. However, in doing so it becomes important to consider how the context in which such messages are seen conditions their impact on media literacy attitudes and knowledge. The results of an experimental test suggest that a media literacy public service announcement was more effective in reinforcing media literacy beliefs when paired with a partisan, rather than a neutral, political program. The effects of presenting media literacy messages outside of the classroom are discussed.

Media literacy is an essential communication tool that helps develop individuals‟ ability to evaluate and interpret media content consciously and analyze it critically. In today‟s digital age, the dissemination of media literacy education not only protects individuals from misleading or manipulative content but also improves their ability to access correct information. Public service announcements (PSAs) are considered a vital tool for creating media literacy by enhancing social awareness, raising consciousness, and educating the public, thanks to their potential to reach large masses. This study was conducted to examine the importance of PSAs in creating media literacy. The study sample comprised a PSA series titled "Nuclear Family‟ prepared by the Turkish Radio and Television Supreme Council. The study was conducted using content analysis, which is a qualitative research method. The data were analyzed using the MAXQDA 2024 qualitative data analysis program. The results of the study highlighted the use of PSAs as an effective tool in raising media literacy awareness. Especially, the issue of information reliability was at the forefront in terms of combating disinformation. The results conformed to the international and national findings on media literacy and PSAs, revealing that they play an important role in media literacy. The study systematically examined the relationship between media literacy and PSAs, thus contributing to the available findings and offering suggestions for increasing social awareness.

This study examined children's advertising literacy level for traditional versus embedded advertising formats by comparing their cognitive and affective advertising literacy level for television commercials vs. advergames. The study also explored how cognitive and affective advertising literacy further attenuate advertising effects by investigating the mediation impact of cognitive and affective advertising literacy on the relation between the ad's format and the purchase request. Third, the study investigated how an advertising literacy training session moderates these effects. The results of this experimental study showed that advergames lead to a higher purchase request rate among children than television commercials. However, only affective but not cognitive advertising literacy mediated the effect of the advertising format on purchase request. In addition, a training session was shown to accelerate children's cognitive (but not their affective) advertising literacy for advergames, but not for television commercials.

The rise of digital media and the increasing consumption of television have transformed advertising strategies, particularly in relation to children. This paper examines the ethical challenges associated with targeted advertising aimed at children, highlighting the psychological vulnerabilities of young consumers and the role of advertisers in influencing their behaviors and purchasing decisions. By analyzing the provisions of the Consumer Protection Act, 2019, and existing regulations, this paper identifies significant gaps in the current legal framework that fail to adequately protect children from manipulative and misleading marketing practices. The study also emphasizes the need for greater media literacy programs, parental intervention, and stricter regulations to safeguard children’s well-being. Through a comprehensive review of relevant case laws and regulatory guidelines, this paper concludes that while progress has been made, substantial efforts are still required to create a more ethical and transparent advertising environment for children.

Media act as a principal consumer socialisation agent. Children are exposed to a continuous stream of marketing messages and it is reported that children’s levels of materialism and wellbeing are negatively affected. Building cognitive defences in children will enable them to critically appraise the content of advertising appeals. At present media literacy education in primary schools is limited. Primary curriculum is undergoing revisions. Employing the Theory of Planned Behaviour, the role of school as a consumer socialisation agent is explored. A mixed methods approach was adopted. By means of a pilot randomised controlled trial, the effect of a recently developed Irish media literacy intervention on outcomes of advertising literacy, materialism and wellbeing is considered. Children aged between eight and 11, in seven primary schools in Ireland took part in the study (n=325). Fidelity of delivery was recorded. Qualitative discussions with teachers and children enabled further consideration of effect of the intervention. The findings show that the media literacy intervention had a statistically significant positive effect on advertising literacy and on wellbeing. A need for further exploration of materialism in children is proposed. The intervention materials were commended by both teachers and children. The characteristic constraint of time as a key barrier to the delivery of media literacy education in school was unearthed. This study demonstrates the positive contribution media literacy education can make to primary curriculum, and suggests means by which media literacy lessons can be included in curriculum.