Media literacy among students in a higher learning institution on environmental issues

Abstract

News related to the environment has always been the focal attention in the mass media of this country. Started with the issue of toxic pollution in Sungai Kim Kim in Pasir Gudang, followed by the haze which affected the whole of South East Asia and then the oil pollution in Sungai Semenyih throughout 2019. These issues also caught the attention of the students in higher education institutions. The rapid growth of mass media has offered a new platform for this group of population to read, trust and then share the news with others. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to look at the media awareness and literacy among the students relating to the environmental issues that they have read. A qualitative method was used in this study involving 15 students. They were selected from two main streams which were from the faculty of sciences and faculty of arts. The results showed that most of the informants from the arts streams had higher awareness regarding the current environmental issues. These include their actions to read, understand and share the news with their friends. In comparison, the students from the faculty of sciences, though they have a profound interest in environmental issues, they were more passive and not keen to share it with their peers. All informants also have a high interest in reading various environmental related information obtained through social media. The results of this study prove that students in higher education institutions in this country have a high level of media literacy and knowledge of the environmental news that they read.