Social media as a learning resource: The impact of a university journalism department’s YouTube channel

Abstract

This study sought to determine whether the Media and Information Literacy videos produced and uploaded on YouTube by the UP Department of Journalism directly and effectively responded to the needs identified by three main stakeholder groups: curriculum experts, senior high school teachers, and students. Using the Uses and Gratifications Theory that places the media consumer at the center, the study established that while both the theme (disinformation and fact-checking) and the platform (YouTube) fell under new media, the videos served both the basic cognitive, affective, integrative, social-integrative, and tension-release needs identified by Blumler and Katz (1974) for traditional media, as well as the new media uses that are modality-, agency-, interactivity-, and navigability-based as identified by Sundar and Limperos (2013). The videos were launched five to six months after the conduct of the initial focus group discussions (FGD) to main stakeholder groups. After launching the Media Literacy YouTube channel, an online survey among the original FGD participants as well as other students and SHS teachers was held to determine the effectiveness of the media literacy videos. The researchers found that the respondents found the MIL videos useful on various levels and significantly met their expectations, indicating that social media is indeed a powerful platform for MIL education.