Media Health Literacy: A Scoping Review and Agenda for Future Research

Abstract

As more people turn to mediated sources of health information, the public’s widespread susceptibility to mis/disinformation has highlighted the role that media health literacy (MHL) plays in increasingly complex media and health care landscapes. To understand how adults navigate their cross-section, this article offers the first published scoping review of MHL. The results show that MHL was developed for adolescents and remains largely within youth demographics. No adult MHL study has been conducted anywhere in the world with a representative sample or with an instrument that employs direct measurement. The findings indicate that little is known about how MHL manifests in adults, with half of all studies lacking theoretical frameworks. This article discusses the societal implications of the current MHL landscape and offers a new construct—Adult Media Health Literacy—that is grounded in the first ecological model of media literacy as a social determinant of health. Future research directions are discussed.