Influence of Students' Knowledge of Internet News Sources and Frequency of Contact with Internet News on Their Reading Attitudes

The lack of fundamental academic skills among university students is increasingly becoming a problem in Japan. To study at a university, students must have adequate media literacy, that is, the ability to sift through large quantities of data to extract necessary information. However, according to a recent survey, many young people in Japan are not aware of Internet news sources. In this study, using a questionnaire survey, I examine whether this trend is also exhibited by university students, as well, and perform data analysis to clarify the relationships with accepted trends. The results of this verification suggest that their attitudes toward reading Internet news are related to the students' knowledge of Internet news sources and their frequency of contact with Internet news.