For quality co-existence with the media, it is essential to possess knowledge and skills on how to use, analyse, critically assess and create media content (Aufderheide 1992), i.e. media literacy skills are required. In Croatia media education takes place primarily through the first language classes, i.e. through media culture, which is one of the components of the Croatian language subject in primary school from first to eighth grade. Although media culture has been present within the Croatian language subject for many years already, to this day, no research study on media literacy of children in primary schools has been conducted. In this research, media literacy testing was conducted among 1000 eight-grade students in Zagreb. The research has shown that students possess a medium level of media literacy, with the lowest results being recorded in the field of analysis and critical evaluation as well as in the field of creation of media content.

This study discusses journalism and how well this profession is framed according to the professional codes of journalism. It focuses on Turkish films made between 1980 and 1990. In the early 1980s, journalism became an important issue with the coercion of the mass media under the Turkish Republic. Gazeteci (The Journalist), Rahmet ve Gazap (Rahmet and Gazap), and Uyanık Gazeteci (The Vigilant Journalist) are the films based on the profession of journalism made during this era. The selected films discuss the freedom of the press, expression, and media ethics, and these themes are intertwined with the melodramatic element of ‘love’. In the films, many dialogues show that the duty of the press is aiding justice or that a journalist must always defend press freedom and write the truth. Social obedience throughout the history of the Turkish Republic is also emphasised in these films.

Media environment is rapidly changing and facing a widespread crisis in journalism. It is followed by the decline of audience trust and increasing market pressures. The main goal is to win the audience’s attention, very often by creating drama and producing ‘conflict’. The news is not based on something that really happened and that is relevant, but it is more often manufactured or artificially produced. In this case study we explore the curious life cycle of a sound bite from a passing remark by the then Croatian Prime Minister Zoran Milanović’s to the headlines, discussions and extensive reports which developed over the course of several days. This example shows how news could be manufactured and content blurred when it is built around a fragment without providing the context, in this case a political quote. For several days, politicians, experts, war veterans, but also ordinary citizens were involved in the manufactured news story without making a reference to the context. Consequently, the democratic debate was avoided. Drawing on a discussion of news fragmentation as isolation from context, we show that in this case, news values (what news is) are increasingly blurred, preventing the news from becoming the source of information and discussion of the country’s key issues.

Citizens’ disaffection with political institutions has resulted in an ever more pronounced distancing between the represented and their representative democratic institutions, with a commensurate increase in citizens’ initiatives aimed at obtaining a higher degree of participation in public life. The imbalance experienced by representative democracy in this respect accounts for the need to improve the way in which institutions communicate. This study aims to assess local communication in the regions of Murcia and Navarre by analysing the level of transparency of their institutional websites. The 41 indicators that underpin Mapa Infoparticip@ (www.mapainfoparticipa.com) in Spain are used to see what similarities and differences can be identified when applying the criteria of transparency and participation in these two single-province Autonomous Communities. The findings show a deficit in implementing norms of transparency. This fact affects the role these institutions play as sources of public information and citizen participation, and it appears in a clearer way in municipalities with a smaller population.

This article examines whether civic technologies deliver an effective technique for developing the political efficacy of citizens and altering their perceived accountability of governments. Employing a survey-based methodology, a quantitative analysis was performed on the users of civic technology sites in the USA, UK, Kenya and South Africa. The primary question posed is whether the specific citizen monitoring actions facilitated by these sites cause a related effect in altering the extent to which citizens believe that governments are responsive to citizen-audit. The results indicate an enhancement in citizen efficacy and perceptions of government accountability. Notable differences detected in the user demographics between the countries studied demonstrate a wide spectrum of citizen usage; however, with common confidence displayed by respondents in the efficacy of the ICT. The findings indicate that the publication and citizen-audit of government information through civic technologies in developed and developing countries increases feelings of external efficacy and perceived government accountability.

This paper addresses the importance of “knowledge” and “access to information” in the formation of young citizens’ opinion through deliberative procedures. The research presented in this paper is grounded in the theoretical framework of deliberative democracy as a democratic model and procedure that allows participants to be engaged in a rational and open dialogue before deciding on a particular issue. Our research draws empirically upon a deliberative event that took place in October 2014 at the Western Macedonia University of Applied Sciences in Greece. The topic of deliberation was “Political Public Opinion Polls.” The results of this study are commensurate with the dominant thesis in the relevant literature, which underlines that the deliberative procedure enriches the knowledge of citizens and thus enables them to participate effectively in the decision making process.

Medijska pismenost jedna je od sredisnjih kompetencija pojedinca u suvremenom drustvu, a medijska informiranost jedan je od njezinih kljucnih aspekata. U ovom radu autori operacionalno definiraju konstrukt medijske informiranosti te ga određuju u odnosu na srodne konstrukte opceg obrazovanja, opce kulture i opce informiranosti. Nadalje, analizirani su metodoloski problemi mjerenja medijske informiranosti, tj. izrade i validacije testova za ispitivanje medijske informiranosti. Na uzorku od 388 kandidata za diplomski studij novinarstva analizirana je razina medijske informiranosti prema razlicitim podrucjima sadržaja, provjerene su metrijske karakteristike Testa aktualne (medijske) informiranosti te je ispitana povezanost medijske informiranosti s nizom korelata: spolom, prosjecnom ocjenom na studiju, Testom profesionalnih znanja novinara, poznavanjem stranih rijeci, stranih izraza i frazema te poznavanjem pravopisa i gramatike. Visi rezultati u Testu aktualne informiranosti povezani su s boljim rezultatima u Testu profesionalnih znanja novinara, s nekim aspektima opceg obrazovanja, kao sto su poznavanje stranih rijeci i stranih izraza i frazema, te je utvrđeno da muskarci ostvaraju nesto vise rezultate. Niska povezanost utvrđena je s prosjecnom ocjenom na preddiplomskom studiju novinarstva, dok povezanost s poznavanjem pravopisa i gramatike nije utvrđena.