The Impact of Audience Media Literacy on Combating Fake News from the Perspective of Experts

Abstract

This study examines the impact of audience media literacy on combating fake news from the perspective of experts. The research method is applied and qualitative, utilizing in-depth interviews with research experts, including university professors, media experts and specialists, and media practitioners. The research tool was a semi-structured interview, and the statistical population of the study comprised three groups: university professors, media experts and specialists, and media practitioners. The reason for selecting these three groups was to utilize the experiences of all individuals proficient in the research topic to address the concept under investigation from all angles. The research sampling method was the snowball method, and the number of samples was determined based on the principle of reaching theoretical saturation. Accordingly, 11 interviews were conducted. After collecting the interview texts and thoroughly analyzing the experts' experiences, the descriptive phenomenology method based on the Husserlian approach was used to analyze the data obtained from the interviews. According to the research results, the codes extracted from the expert interviews were divided into three categories: 1) literacy related to the nature and purpose of the news, 2) literacy related to the audience, 3) literacy related to the news publisher.