Blogs, Empowerment, and the Urgency of Developing Digital Literacy and Critical Literacy among University Students

Abstract

In the era of the digital society, for university students, blogs serve as a discussion platform for ideas and thoughts. The presence of blogs tends to be a solution to the incapability and limited time that university students have when they have to complete academic tasks before due dates. Blogs, which should function as a discussion platform, have seemed to change into mere information sources that are popular among university students. This action of pragmatism among university students in making use of blogs is definitely contrary to the main aim of blogs: a public discussion room, as well as a tool for the young generation to express their ideas. Instead of sparking critical and democratic discussions when responding to other people’s opinions, blogs among university students are used as a source of information to meet their academic requirements. In terms of empowering the youth, including university students who put forward their ideas and become involved in the process of public discussion, blogs cannot function as a tool to achieve this empowerment objective. Empowerment, which is mainly achieved through emancipation actions used to alleviate the constraints on subordinates, has yet to be seen among university students using blogs. To achieve the aim of empowerment through blogs in the public sphere, there is a need for digital literacy among university students to stimulate them to think critically. Digital literacy and critical literacy are highly required to equip university students so that blogs are utilized not only as a source of information in terms of pragmatic interest but also as an effective empowering device for the youth as part of civil society.