DIGITAL LEARNING CULTURE AND THE NEGOTIATION OF MORAL VALUES: AN ENCODING AND DECODING ANALYSIS OF BLOOKET IN HINDU RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

Abstract

This study explores how Blooket-based Hindu Religious Education shapes the negotiation of moral values and ethical understanding within the digital learning culture of students. The increasing orientation toward gamified learning has transformed how young people engage with and interpret moral teachings in religious contexts. Using a qualitative interpretive approach, this research combines Hall’s theory of encoding and decoding with Bourdieu’s ideas of habitus and arena to examine how teachers communicate Hindu values and how students interpret these messages in digital classroom settings. Data were gathered through participatory observation, in-depth interviews with teachers and students at SMAN 1 Mengwi, and analysis of classroom interactions during Blooket-based learning sessions. The findings reveal that Blooket functions not only as an educational game but as a cultural space that mediates communication, motivation, and the interpretation of moral meaning. Students display three patterns of understanding (dominant, negotiated, and oppositional) showing how moral values are redefined within the logic of digital play and performance. The study concludes that digital learning is a cultural arena where meanings are produced, contested, and reshaped, emphasizing the need for a critical and humanistic perspective on media in the formation of students’ religious character and social ethics.