The Intellectual Structure of Media Literacy Field

Media Literacy is a rich and interdisciplinary field which has roots in many different fields and scholarly perspectives such as sociology, psychology, education, political theory, communication, art, and aesthetics. There are some qualitative studies which review the media literacy literature to identify the structure and trends in the field. However, to the best of our knowledge, there are no quantitative studies which have attempted to map the field. Therefore, aim of this study is to identify the intellectual structure of the field. For this purpose, document cocitation analysis method was used aiming to reveal the shared perceptions of the authors. Apart from the qualitative methods, co-citation analysis attempts to reveal not only the perception of a particular author, but also the shared perceptions of the authors who work in that field. Therefore, regarded as an objective method enabling researchers to surface status and trends in the scientific fields, co-citation analysis is commonly used in scientific fields to examine their intellectual structure and ecology. In the present study, by adopting co-citation method, source documents were obtained from the ISI Web of Knowledge database. Results showed that the field of media literacy is fostered by seven subfields as Critical Media Literacy Education, Social Psychology, Eating Disorders, Tobacco Use, New Literacies, National and International Agendas and, Digital Citizenship and Democratic Participation. Findings of the study could be used by the researchers and educators of the field in a way of building a collective understanding of the field.