Abstract: Media like television, the Internet and smart phone have exerted a profound impact on and have changed people's behavior and ways of communication. More and more scholars have realized that media literacy should be one of the necessary qualities for citizens in the 21st century. Domestic and foreign scholars have conducted a lot of researches on the definition, purpose, content of media literacy, and on significance and approaches to citizen media literacy education. This paper reviews the research progress at home and abroad from both theoretical and practical perspectives, and points out that the previous researches still have shortcomings. With diversified research objectives, there is still an absence of researches on the media literacy of the elderly population and insufficient researches on the localization of media literacy theory,and there are relatively few studies on media literacy education at the level of citizen education. Therefore, future researches should concern more about diverse social groups, especially the elderly population, about the localization of media literacy theory, and also about mass media literacy education.

Key words: the media, media culture, media literacy, media literacy education, the national education