Media Literacy: An Analysis of Reddit User Discourses in the Context of the BBC Panorama Crisis

Abstract

This study aims to examine Reddit users’ comments from a media literacy perspective on theprocess that escalated into a public crisis in November 2025 following the edited broadcast of Donald Trump’s January 6, 2021 speech on the BBC’s Panorama program on October 28, 2024. The research seeks to reveal how discourses produced in the digital public sphere are shapedin relation to media credibility, editorial ethics, political polarization, and cognitive biases. Both qualitative and quantitative research methods were employed. A total of 304 Redditcomments that directly referenced the BBC’s edited broadcasting practice were selectedthrough purposive sampling and included in the analysis. User discourses were coded throughqualitative content analysis, resulting in thematic categories such as media credibility andethics, political polarization, legal responsibility, and socio-cultural reactions. Within thequantitative phase, frequency distributions, sentiment analysis, types of cognitive bias, andlevels of media literacy were calculated and visualized using the Python programminglanguage. The findings indicate that user discourses are largely shaped by negative emotions, confirmation bias, and ideological positioning. Users with lower levels of media literacy tendto produce generalized, decontextualized, and emotionally charged comments, whereas a small number of users with higher media literacy competence are able to evaluate editorialinterventions within the framework of ethical principles and institutional responsibility. Moreover, a strong inverse relationship was identified between media literacy and politicalpolarization. Overall, the study demonstrates that media literacy is not merely an individualskill but a structural and transformative civic competence that determines the quality of digital debate during periods of crisis.