A Needs Analysis of Metadiscourse Features Awareness and Media Literacy in Crisis News
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.33102/jcicom.vol4no1.98Keywords:
COVID-19 news, Crisis News, Metadiscourse, Metadiscourse Awareness Test, News with and without Metadiscourse, Writing PromptsAbstract
Metadiscourse serves to direct readers through the text and allows them to understand it better. However, the readers of crisis news frequently misinterpret the news because of the inconsistent sentence formation. Hence, content creators or journalists need to create a message that is understood accurately. Therefore, the study's aim is to ascertain if journalism students are aware of the employment of metadiscourse features particularly in Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) related news before and after an intervention process. COVID-19 news is one of the crisis news. Eleven journalism students took the Metadiscourse Awareness Test twice, once before and once after the intervention process. As part of the intervention process, students were provided with news with and without metadiscourse as well as writing prompts in order to enhance awareness of the appropriate usage of metadiscourse in crisis news. When compared with their pre-test scores, the results of the post-test revealed that the students had an overall greater awareness of metadiscourse features. Additionally, it was found that the intervention process had a substantial impact on the journalism students' awareness of the usage of metadiscourse in crisis news. As a result, the results of the Metadiscourse Awareness Test might be utilised to grow the journalism students’ knowledge of metadiscourse and create more effective content creators.
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