Accomplishments

HKBU scholars win Public Policy Research Fund for critical news literacy research

The Public Policy Research Fund of the Central Policy Unit awarded a grant of HK$492,982 to four HKBU scholars for their project entitled “Investigating Hong Kong Students’ Critical News Literacy in the Age of Social Media”.

The cross-disciplinary research team comprises Dr Kelly Ku and Dr Lisa Deng, Assistant Professors of the Department of Education Studies, Dr Celine Song, Assistant Professor of the Department of Journalism, and Dr Kang Yi, Assistant Professor of the Department of Government and International Studies.

Dr Ku, the principal investigator of the project, said critical news literacy is a relatively novel concept to Hong Kong students. They seem less aware of the shared responsibility between media outlets and those who read the news in examining news quality. She also called for news literacy education to be made available for young readers of news so that they can reason proactively and critically about the truthfulness of news messages.

The project aims to examine usages and motivations underlying news seeking behaviours on social media platforms among Hong Kong students aged 12 to 18, as well as to assess their critical news literacy across different domains.

The project team hopes to inform policy makers and educators of the present needs in nurturing critically informed social engagement among the young generation of Hong Kong.

	(From left) Dr Kang Yi, Dr Celine Song, Dr Kelly Ku and Dr Lisa Deng obtain a grant from the Public Policy Research Fund