STUDENTS ́ABILITY TO IDENTIFY MEDIA BIAS IN WRITTEN PRESS HABILIDAD DE LOS ESTUDIANTES PARA IDENTIFICAR EL SESGO MEDIÁTICO EN PRENSA ESCRITA

The intention of this study is to analyze the relationship between reading comprehension and students’ ability to identify media bias in written press. The participants for this study were sixty EFL students from a language department of an Ecuadorian university. There was no random assignment of participants to the control and experimental groups. Information was obtained from a questionnaire by Browne and Keeley (2004). Data was coded manually, and the outcomes showed no significant 1 Profesora de Inglés de la Universidad Técnica de Manabí, Ecuador. Doctora en Educación con Mención Internacional otorgado por la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5725-6248 http://bit.ly/2MtmaeX mprivadeneira@utm.edu.ec +593979153759 improvement in students’ ability to identify media bias referred to the variable “time”. Also, there was no significance in the interaction of the variable “time” and the variable “group”, and there was little difference in the two times the test was taken by both groups.


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Profesora de Inglés de la Universidad Técnica de Manabí, Ecuador. Doctora en Educación con Mención Internacional otorgado por la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5725-6248 http://bit.ly/2MtmaeX mprivadeneira@utm.edu.ec +593979153759 improvement in students' ability to identify media bias referred to the variable "time". Also, there was no significance in the interaction of the variable "time" and the variable "group", and there was little difference in the two times the test was taken by both groups.

KEYWORDS:
Media bias, written press, reading comprehension.
Los datos se codificaron manualmente, y los resultados no mostraron una mejora significativa en la habilidad de los estudiantes para identificar el sesgo de los medios referido a la variable "tiempo". Además, no hubo significancia en la interacción de la variable "tiempo" y la variable "grupo", y hubo poca diferencia en las dos veces en que la prueba fue tomada por ambos grupos.

INTRODUCTION
Few studies related to media bias have been published objectively (Groseclose & Milyo, forthcoming). This kind of bias is reduced when the news market has more competitors (Gentzkow & Shapiro, 2005). Traditionally, the use of media has been used in countries to foster democracy, nonetheless, some voters and political commentators consider that media lacks objectivity (Chiang & Knight, 2011). In this sense, media could be potentially biased to empower or protect specific groups in our society.

READING COMPREHENSION
Reading is a skill that should be fostered from early critical thinking to differentiate biased information from that which is not biased.

Objectives and research questions
The goal of this study is to analyze the relationship between reading comprehension and students' ability to identify media bias in written press. Thus, the following research questions were proposed: RQ1: What is the relationship between reading comprehension and students' ability to identify media bias in written press? RQ2: Does training in reading comprehension helps to identify media bias in written press?

Participants
Sixty EFL students from a language department of an Ecuadorian university participated in this study. There was no random assignment of participants to the control and experimental groups. At the beginning of the study, they were attending a fourth-level English course in a language department that offers six levels of English as part of the curriculum for all university majors.

Instruments
The instrument used to achieve the objective in this study was a questionnaire by Browne and Keeley (2004). This questionnaire was used after reading a newspaper article and it was taken as pretest and posttest by all the participants.

Procedures
This study required students to read a newspaper article in Spanish to complete a questionnaire by Browne and Keeley (2004). This questionnaire was used to analyze the relationship between reading comprehension and students' ability to identify media bias in written press. During the process, students were explained vocabulary related to this questionnaire that was used as pretest and posttest. Ten experts in economics, education, technology and administration validated students' responses.

Data analysis
Data was coded manually by considering three similar students' responses as a pattern (Hatch, 2002, as cited in Saldaña, 2009.

RESULTS
The results reveled no significant improvement in students' ability to identify media bias referred to the variable "time". This is shown in Table   1 where the value of the significance for this variable (,081) is greater than ,05. In addition, there was no significance in the interaction of the variable "time" and the variable "group", as it is shown in Table 1 where the significance value (,883) is greater than ,05. B O L E T Í N R E D I P E 9 ( 2 ) : 1 4 0 -1 4 4 -F E B R E R O 2 0 2 0 -I S S N 2 2 5 6 -1 5 3 6 · 1 4 3 · ( 2 ) : 1 3 2 -1 3 9 -F E B R E R O 2 0 2 0 -I S S N 2 2 5 6 -1 5 3 6 · 1 4 4 ·

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS
The outcomes of this study show an irrelevant improvement in students' ability to identify media bias referred to the variable "time". Also, there was a small difference in the two times the test was taken by both groups. The group of participants showed problems related to grammar, vocabulary, semantics, syntax, and low-level critical thinking skills.
These results show that training in reading comprehension do not help to identify media bias in written press and therefore no relationship between the two variables. It is important to mention that an earthquake occurred during the study. This situation and other factors were limitations that could have affected the outcomes. Additionally, the low quality in Ecuadorian Education affects students' literacy and probably their ability to identify media bias.
Although the results cannot be generalized to all the population due to the sample size, it is important to consider that this kind of study could lead to improve reading comprehension and students' ability to identify media bias. The act of manipulating audiences is a reality that powerful groups apply through persuasion and seduction.
Therefore, it is necessary to foster appropriate reading instruction programs and prepare our students to be aware to slanted information.