Law Literacy Regarding Information Use and Internet Access Among Public University Students in Bangkok

Abstract

The objectives of this mixed method study included 1) an examination of the law literacy concerning the undergraduate students’ access and use of the Computer-related Crime Act B.E. 2550, Copyright Act B.E. 2537, Copyright Act (No. 2) B.E. 2558 and Creative Commons information which has been available on the Internet, 2) a comparison of their legal awareness using such variables as sexes, fields of study, and classroom learning, and 3) an exploration of the students’ needs for the instruction of legal knowledge concerning an access and use of legal information. The study sample included 549 3 rd and 4 th year students of the public universities in Bangkok. The key informants for qualitative data included 8 students of the universities where the law information access and use instructions were delivered and of those where the instructions were not given. The study tools were assessment forms and semi-structured interview forms, and the collected data were analyzed by frequency, mean, percentage, and standard deviation. T- test and F-test were used for testing the hypothesis, and content analysis was used for analyzing the interview data.

The findings indicated that the students’ legal awareness on the copyright law No. 1 B.E. 2537 and No. 2 B.E. 2558 was at high level, while their knowledge on the Computer - related Crime Act B.E. 2550 and the Creative Commons was at the moderate level. The comparison of the knowledge on both Copyright Acts and Creative Commons showed that male and female students possessed different levels of knowledge, and the knowledge on Computer- related Crime Act B.E. 2550 and the other three Acts of the students from different subject fields was significantly different at 0.5. As for the needs for the instruction on the legal literacy connected to the access and use of legal information on Internet of the undergraduate students, it was found that the study sample became fully aware of the importance of law literacy and they proposed that the universities offer a law literacy course and make some revision on the current course contents to respond to the legal and social changes.