Graphic Design Students and Social Media Usage: A Check on New Media Literacy

Digital media's growing impact on education is a defining feature of the twenty-first century. Research indicates a notable void in knowledge on the degree of active engagement with new media literacy that students in diverse fields, such as graphic design, exhibit. Using the New Media Literacy Framework, this study attempts to address this gap by objectively evaluating the graphic design students' new media literacy abilities. The study adopted a quantitative descriptive survey to identify, analyse, and describe the new media literacy skills of Graphic design students towards social media use. A purposive sampling technique was used to select 150 active students based on the four-continua skills as indicators from the New Media Literacy Framework. The findings of the study indicate that Graphic design students have high levels of functional consuming, critical consuming, critical consuming, and functional media literacy skills. Additionally, regression analysis conducted to establish what influences design students’ new media literacy skills revealed the predictors as; the type of social media used by design students, students' level, gender, and the area of specialization of the design student.