New Media Literacy Skills and Usage Behaviours of Facebook and Line Application among the Communication Arts Undergraduate Students, Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University

Abstract

This research was a survey of undergraduate students studying Communication Arts at Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University that aimed to evaluate 1) their new media literacy level 2) behaviours in using the Facebook and Line applications; 3) the correlation between demographic factors and the students’ new media literacy; 4) the correlation between demographic factors and the students’ behaviours in using the Facebook and Line applications; and 5) the correlation between students’ new media literacy and their behaviours in using the Facebook and Line applications. This was a mixed methods research. For the quantitative portion, a questionnaire was administered to 178 students who enrolled in the professional experience in communication arts workshop at Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University. For the qualitative portion, interviews were conducted with 24 key informants selected from the sample.

The results showed that the majority of the sample had a high level of new media literacy. The majority reported spending time using the Internet at the highest level. Their purposes for using the Internet are for killing time, for work or study the most. The online social media applications they used the most were Line app, Facebook and YouTube, respectively. They used a variety of the functions on Facebook and the functions they used the most were to click “like”, to post photographs, and to send private messages respectively. The functions of Line app they used the most were chatting, sending stickers and adding friends, respectively. Level of new media literacy did not correlated with any of the demographic factors. However, age is the factor correlated with Facebook usage behaviour in terms of frequency of use and average length of time usage.  While income is the only factor correlated with Line app usage behaviour. There is a significant relationship between new media literacy and Facebook usage behaviour and Line usage behaviour.

Interviews with key informants regarding using the Facebook and Line applications for the purpose of studying revealed that both Facebook and Line app could meet a variety of the key informants’ needs. They suggested that the School of Communication Arts, STOU could use Facebook and Line app in the management of courses such as managing assignments, self-learning sessions, academic counselling, and sharing academic information because those applications are convenient for students to reach, re-open and send feedback of courses information without any extra cost.