MAPPING ON USE OF MEDIA AND NEED OF MEDIA LITERACY PROGRAMMES FOR SCHOOL GOING CHILDREN IN AHMEDABAD, GUJARAT, INDIA

The issue of media literacy has already been globally addressed especially the relationship the media has with children. However, because of COVID-19 pandemic, the media has become more involved in the lives of children where they have depended on it for school recreation and communication. With the over reliance on media by the school going children especially in these times where there is a new mode of communication with the improved technology, the researcher wanted to get a new perspective on how young people are adapting to media and how media literacy can make the adapting even easier. This research study is a part of an ongoing doctoral work on “Need Analysis for a Media Literacy Module in School Education Programs: Specific Study of State Board of Gujarat.” The present research is exploratory in nature and is aimed at finding out how media literacy will help school going children to cope up with the bombarding of media industry in their lives. This is primary research to discover the new information and reach a new understanding on how the school going children will adjust with the help of media literacy to the ever-changing media climate of the present. The research study uses in-depth structured interview as a tool to attain the required data of 68 participants which includes school students, teachers and parents of Ahmedabad schools. The research concludes that there is an overwhelming of media platforms especially social media that has bombarded the school going children’s lives and for safe navigation of the media world the children need the equipping to be done on a thorough level which calls for rigorous media literacy continuously because of the ever-evolving nature of the media world. If introduced as a subject at the school level, Media literacy can help children have the ability to access in terms of technical know how, analyse content to create a better understanding, also evaluate the media content as they retain what is for their benefit and discard what is not and also have the ability to be content creators even at a better and larger scale.