Research in Focus: Dr. Khalid Al-Balushi on Media Literacy in the Digital Age

Dr. Khalid Al-Balushi has spent the past three years studying a question that affects everyone who reads news online: how do young people decide what to trust?

His research, conducted with university-age participants across Oman, explores the habits, assumptions, and critical skills that shape how digital news is received and shared. The findings are being prepared for publication in an international communication studies journal.

The Research Question

The project began with a straightforward observation. Students often consume news through social media rather than through established news organisations. The pathways through which they encounter information are fragmented and often unmediated by editorial standards.

The question is not whether students are engaging with news. They are. The question is what frameworks they have for evaluating it.

Dr. Khalid Al-Balushi

His research uses interviews, media diaries, and source analysis to map how students make credibility judgements — and where those judgements break down.

Early Findings

Participants showed strong confidence in familiar platforms regardless of the quality of content those platforms distribute. Verification habits were inconsistent and rarely taught explicitly.

Dr. Al-Balushi argues that media literacy education needs to move beyond identifying obvious misinformation and towards deeper habits of source evaluation and contextual reasoning.

Implications for Teaching

• He is piloting a short media literacy module with current Bayan students.
• The module integrates source evaluation into standard research writing assignments.
• Results will inform future curriculum development at the college.

The full research paper is expected to be submitted for peer review later this year.