Legal literacy of new media legislations among youths

Abstract

The primary function of the existence of a law is to ensure the well-being of the community and the nation. In the scope of internet usage, the five important governing laws are Digital Signature Act 1997, Computer Crime Act 1997, Communications and Multimedia Act 1998, Personal Data Protection Act 2010 and Defamation Act 1957. The new media legislation aims to control the abuse of social media that has been seen increasing lately. Hence, this study aims to find out the level of understanding and awareness of youth on new media legislation. In terms of methodology, this study uses quantitative approaches to obtain quality research data. In this study, the respondents were divided into two groups, the first consisting of youth, the majority of youth in Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. A total of 227 sets of questionnaires have been distributed to respondents of this first group. Meanwhile, the second group respondents are students at Politeknik Ungku Omar, Ipoh, Perak. A total of 80 respondents were involved in this second group, bringing the total number of respondents in this study to 307 respondents. The findings show that the majority of youths have good knowledge of the new media concept. In addition, the majority of respondents, youths, are also aware of and understand the new media-related laws in general. However, when mentioning some types or legal names regarding the new media and its provisions, the majority of respondents are still at a moderate level of legal literacy.