The Impact of Digital Literacy on Millennials' Political Preferences Case on Wahdatul Ummah SD-IT Teacher Board Metro City, Lampung

Abstract

This article discusses the impact of millennials’ digital literacy on political choices in both national and local elections. This theme is considered important considering that political preferences are strongly influenced by paradigms built from a process of reading social phenomena both through classical literature and contemporary digital literacy. The problem is that social media as the main reading material for millennials is often filled with news that is almost without filters and comparisons, making it difficult to differentiate between black and white information. This was a field research with qualitative study pattern and questionnaires and interviews being the main data sources with research objects from the Wahdatul Ummah Metro Lampung Gru SD-IT Board. The selection of research objects was determined based on considerations where SD-IT Wahdatul Ummah, a superior Islamic school (SD Pengmobil), has a millennial teacher board, is social media literate, and understands social and political issues in society. The main problem formulation that will be studied in this research is the impact of the digital literacy of the Wahdatul Ummah SD-IT Teachers’ Council on their political choice tendencies in election contestations. The results of the research found that the majority of the Wahdatul Ummah Metro City SD-IT Teacher Council is very active with social media, social media is used as a medium for educating students, and also for self-education, especially when dealing with socio-political issues in the election year. The research also found that the political preferences of the Wahdatul Ummah Metro City SD-IT Teachers’ Council were greatly influenced by their maturity in digital integration on social media so that they do not easily accept news without a clarification process, and act moderately and are not carried away by issues of polarization due to the impact of the existing political process.
 Keywords: digital literacy, impact, millennial, political preference