Abstract:

As a result of the diversity in social media content and the continuous pollution of information it brings, there is a need to question the reliability and accuracy of the new information circulated. A fake Facebook message and a source of loss posts, whose source is unclear; have been used in the study to investigate the questioning processes and share the status of their accuracy by Facebook users. This research focuses on the cognitive interpretation of media literacy and the stages of analyzing the accuracy and reliability of messages with the Five Key Questions approach in Media Literacy. Two messages on social media, which have been widely shared by different circles, have been selected to analyze. 116 students both attendees and nonattendees of Media Literacy course at the Faculty of Communication participated in the study. During semi-structured interviews the students were asked to complete the following sentences; "I think this message ... because ...", "I shared this message because ..." and "I did not share this message because ...". In the analysis of the data, phenomenology from qualitative research patterns with content analysis and quantitative techniques were used together with mixed methods research design. The results of the research show that the widespread messages on social media are assumed correct by most of the users without questioning and it shows that the dangers mentioned in the messages are frequently shared by social media users with the idea of sealing themselves against the possibility of being real.

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