Social Media as a Gateway to Information: Digital Literacy on Current Issues in Social Media

Abstract

The digital age has changed humans in accessing information from offline media to online media. The presence of digital media, such as smartphone help people get current issues quickly without limits of time and place. With advances in information technology, internet users not only can receive information but also send information in the form of comments and share information. The current internet media that has become a gateway for information is social media. This paper aims to discuss information dissemination on current issues in social media. The data sources for this paper were social media texts and online questionnaire results. The research question in this paper is what current issues are communicated in social media and how is the cyber communities’ digital literacy on current issues in social media. The research findings show that 90.03% of people access information through social media, the frequency of time spent with social media to access information is 81%, and the type of social media used to access information is Facebook (38.4%), WhatsApp (20.2%), YouTube (18.4%), Twitter (8.3%) and Tiktok (6.1%). Furthermore, the current issues that can be accessed by media users are covid-19 vaccination and intolerance. The major problem with social media as a gateway to information is the digital literacy of the cyber communities on the spread of fake news related to the Covid-19 vaccination and intolerance.