Pensee Journal Vol 76, No. 5;May 2014 295 office@penseejournal.com The Effect Of Mass Media On Attitude Toward Reading Mustafa Turkyilmaz Deparment of Turkish Education, Faculty of Education, Ahi Evran Universty Terme Street 40100, Kirsehir, Turkey Tel: +90 386 280 5162 E-mail: turkyilmazmustafa@yahoo.com Abstract Individual of modern era reads less while watching more; he has an access to the information anytime, anywhere and the one he wants. However, the easiness that mass media provides makes reaching the truth difficult by bringing load of information to people along with itself. This situation turns people into “sophomore”s. This study aiming to define the effect of mass media on attitude toward reading is carried out at the first term of 2013- 2014 academic year in the center of Kirsehir province in Turkey. Among the survey models, relational survey model is used to realize this study. The population of the study consists of 8352 students studying at 9, 10, 11 and 12 th grade in the center of Kirsehir province. By considering the difficulty in reaching the all of population and sampling theory, 1092 students chosen among the scope of the study with %3 margin of error form the sample of the study. Primarily, the reliability and validity of the scale are completed; after these processes, it is practiced at ten secondary schools. “The Attitude Scale Towards Reading of Secondary School Students” developed by Turkyi lmaz (2012) completed as an instrument to gather data. SPSS 17.0 and Lisrel 8.80 statistical programs are used in data processing. In the study, it is concluded that secondary school students’ attitudes toward reading decreases in the case of the increase in the contemporary mass media usage and possession of these tools; while the attitude toward reading increases with the reading. Also, it is found that there is an increase in the attitude toward reading along with the raise in the reading and following rate of magazine, newspapers which can be called traditional tools. Nevertheless, it is detected that having an account in social networks such as Facebook and Twitter has a negative effect on attitude toward reading. Key Words: Reading, reading attitude, mass media, secondary education. 1. Instruction As the pace in the retrieval and transmission of information rises and gets easy, modern era people often face with the question and problem of reliability and accuracy of the information. What will people rely on or consider true? Will they bring the intuition forward or accept reading, science as mentors? In his 1984, Orwell sets forth a world which isn’t available and not realized but presented as it is. We started to live in such a world where anybody can share anything without searching the accuracy or inaccuracy of it and anybody has the sharing feature. This case brings the unqualified reading problem along with it. With the following statements, Adler and Van Doren (2011: 12) point out the negative effects of the mass media: “We, modern people have the feeling of choke under the information bombing which deforms our understanding. One of the reasons of that situation is that mass media is designed in such a manner that it turns reasoning into something unnecessary. Complicated and whole components are delivered up audience of radio and TV with a little effort and difficulty in order to make their minds busy. "In this sense, elective Course of Reading Skills Curriculum produced by Ministry of National Education for the 5 th and 6 th graders indicated the mentioned matter. “While media mass coming out with the developing technology removes the problem of access to information, it causes individuals to have problems in making sense of the content due to information intensity.” Maybe, as Manguel(2013: 187) notes an ideal readers can make use of the true and valid one in the building of meaning by finding it among the information mountain. He states: “an ideal reader is an interpreter, he can anatomize the text, skin, cut into small pieces, watch each and every artery and vein, and then he produces a completely new, sensitive entity”. In that case, a reader who doesn’t approach the text with its details cannot be expected to be an ideal one when we think a reader on the contrary of the one defined by Manguel. Concordantly, when examining Göktürk(2002), we observe that he cited the following verse of Poet Yunus in his own book “Twenty-nine syllables / read it from end to end while /