MEDYA OKURYAZARLIĞI

Debates about the media effects have been the main research subject in this area. Position of the viewer/reader vis-à-vis the messages has been considered active or passive in different periods in accordance with the policies. Today, at this point, the power of media has become indisputable. In particular, the development of communication technologies is an important factor that helped increase media's area of activity. The individuals are faced with a larger number and variety of media messages now than in the past. This increase in the quantity has brought with itself the problem of quality and thus, there have been debates about the need to increase awareness of individuals, especially young people and children, about these texts which sometimes cannot be controlled. Therefore, media literacy has emerged as a civil society movement which aims the protection of children and the young audience from harmful broadcasting. This movement was later adopted by governments and media literacy courses were introduced in the curriculum with the support of the government in many countries. The subject of this study is media literacy education, which can be summarized as helping acquire the behavior pattern that includes questioning the media texts/messages which are created by media's own unique language. In this study we tried to emphasize concept, purpose, importance and historical development of media literacy, thus provide a framework for the subject.