Investigating Information Literacy Skills And Practices Of Media Personnel

Abstract

The concept of information literacy refers to purposeful information practices in a society characterized by almost limitless access to information and where information practices in digital environments shape and constitute important elements in most people’s lives in all part of the world. Information literacy is a set of skills required by a person to find, retrieve, analyze and use information, it is directly linked with lifelong learning, critical thinking, and learning. The research aimed at evaluating information literacy skills and practices among media personnel in Zambia. The aims of the study were to identify how knowledgeable media personnel are in information literacy skills, assess the application of information literacy skills and practice of media personnel and to find out the challenges faced in ensuring that information literacy skills and practice are adhered to by media personnel. This study made use of descriptive research design and used purposive sampling technique, were three media houses were our target group namely; MUVI TV, ZNBC and ZANIS which were individually treated as cases, a sample of ten (10) media personnel were sampled and data was collected using interview guides. The data was analyzed using thematic analysis were the main responses were categorized into themes. The findings of the study showed that most media personnel were not knowledgeable of the concept of “information/media literacy” because they linked it to “literacy” in general. On the other hand, they managed to describe the attributes of a literate person and the skills that the person needs to have to be considered literate. Even though they did not have enough understanding of information/ media literacy, it was evident that they had a way of scrutinizing information, before they disseminated it to the public to ensure that it was true and complete, they applied information literacy practices in their work. The findings further show that the media personnel face challenges in carrying out their work, these include information explosion, internet, these tend to make media houses loss their salt or value to the people. With these observation of media personnel not having knowledge of what information literacy it can deduced that, it is the reason why we have information that that is complete because most journalist do not realize the importance of information literacy and how it is important in their day to day activities. Thus, there is need to come up with policies that will ensure that media personnel are acquitted with information/media literacy skills from an early stage of their study and have continuous professional development programs from time so as to broaden their understanding of information /media literacy.