Project II – Literacy and Social Media

Senior Seminar

 

 

 

Literacy and Social Media

Research Question

“Whether the excessive use of various social media sites affect children literacy positively or negatively”?

Tentative Theories

The competent handling with the content published on the social platforms and handling with the genre social media is considered as the social media literacy. Social media can impact the child development and literacy skills of children. It was found that social media does not have any useful benefit for toddlers and teens literacy skills. According to the National Literacy Trust, various social networking sites, as well as blogs, helps the students to develop their positive attitude towards writing and to become more confident in their writing abilities. Basically, social media is a website that allows social interaction among different types of people. It includes social networking sites such as Myspace, Facebook and Twitter, virtual worlds such as Sims, gaming sites and video sites such as blogs and YouTube. Social media has a negative impact on the literacy skills of children. It declines the writing skills of children because of the excessive usage of shortcuts and online chatting. Social media also have some positive impact on the literacy skills of children of all ages because it provides the information to children about several new aspects that they do not know previously. The social media also provides the educational learning programs that help the students in learning. It benefits the toddler’s literacy skills of social media.

 

Hypothesis

The social media is beneficial and useful for enhancing the literacy skills of children if they are using the various sites of social media effectively and efficiently and make a proper and correct use of it. It is important to make the efficient use of the social media sites as it impacts the literacy skills and writing skills of an individual. The children should use social media sites for a limited time and for the correct purpose i.e. to take essential information.

Methodology

There are different methods are used to conduct the research. A large amount of data is collected related in order to understand the concept easily and in a better way. With the help of the mixed method approach, this research determines the relationship between the literacy skills in children and social media. It helps in determining the fact that use of the various social media sites by children negatively impact the literacy skills of the children or not.

In the qualitative analytical method which is also known as the primary method, we collect data related to our research topic. In this research, some secondary data is also used in order to support all of our findings. As the secondary data, journal articles, websites, the information from the newspaper, magazines and other materials and sources are used. We will also conduct the interviews in which we will collect the information from people and their perspectives that whether excessive use of social media can impact the literacy skills of their child or not. We also collect the data from schools and taking the interviews of teachers and their opinions regarding the research area. It helps in collecting useful information related to research.

In the secondary data, we will collect a variety of data incorporated with the longitudinal cohort examination. In this, we have examined the 10,000 children that are studying in different school and in different classes. It helps in determining the correct results because these children are using social media sites for different timing. Some are using social media sites extensively and some are using it for only a limited time. We will collect this data with the total amount of time spent by the children in the social media sites and their performance in the class and their literacy skills. This study is key in examining the research topic and it is the major part that helps in drawing the results as well as the conclusion of the research. The qualitative research can help in providing critical information that examines and re-examines the critical nuanced data. This approach provides the correct and efficient results on which the research is conducted.

The secondary data helps in creating the purposeful sampling pool and accurate results which allows the research to target some specific group. Using the different age group people and the data of several students helps in drawing accurate results and it allows in a better understanding of a specific group. In the methodology, we use both qualitative and quantitative methodology for sampling selection and seeking to learn and understand the central phenomenon of a research article. It helps in understanding the effect of social media sites in the literacy skills of children of different age. There are some limitations of the research that will allow conducting the future investigation on this research topic. The limitation is that the data is collected about the children were belong to different class and age and the children that belong to higher class uses social media sites more as compared to children that study in lower class. It can provide the wrong results in our research area. It also created several conflicts in the research area.

 

 

 

References

Alper, M. (2011). Developmentally appropriate New Media Literacies: Supporting cultural competencies and social skills in early childhood education. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 13(2), 175-196. doi:10.1177/1468798411430101

Bigelow, M., Vanek, J., King, K., & Abdi, N. (2017). Literacy as social (media) practice: Refugee youth and native language literacy at school. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 60, 183-197. doi: 10.1016/j.ijintrel.2017.04.002

Giustini, D. (2015). An online course on social media for student librarians: teaching the information skills and literacies of social media. Information Literacy Beyond Library 2.0, 151-162. doi:10.29085/9781856048804.015

Mattock, L. K. (2015). Teaching Visual and Media Literacy Skills Through Media Production Technology. Essentials of Teaching and Integrating Visual and Media Literacy, 237-249. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-05837-5_12