DIGITAL COMMUNICATIVE LITERACY IN VOCATIONAL EDUCATION: A DIAGNOSTIC STUDY ON STUDENTS’ UNDERSTANDING AND RESPONSES TO ONLINE MISINFORMATION

Abstrak

The spread of misinformation on social media presents growing challenges for adolescents’ digital literacy, particularly among vocational high school students who actively engage with online platforms. This study examines how digital communicative literacy (DCL) shapes students’ ability to understand, evaluate, and respond to misleading information. Drawing on media literacy frameworks, DCL is conceptualized as comprising three domains: conceptual understanding, reasoning logic, and critical decision-making. The study involved 100 vocational students in West Java, Indonesia, using a validated ten-item educational diagnostic instrument. The findings show that students demonstrate moderate conceptual understanding of misinformation but weaker reasoning and decision-making when encountering emotionally persuasive content. Students with lower DCL scores also reported greater confusion and difficulty when evaluating misleading information online. These findings suggest the importance of integrating practice-based media literacy activities in vocational education to strengthen students’ critical reasoning and responsible engagement with digital media. This study contributes to the literature by advancing DCL as an integrative framework that links cognitive understanding with communicative decision-making in adolescents’ responses to misinformation.