University Al-Azhar Indonesia (UAI) and Collegium Civitas, Poland (CC) advanced their collaboration from a memorandum of understanding (MoU) signing in last March 2023 to a memorandum of agreement (MoA) signing in August 2023. The two leaders of each university, Prof. Dr. Ir. Asep Saefuddin, M.Sc. (Rector of UAI) who is represented by Dr. Mohamad Ghozali Moenawar, Lc., M.M. (Head of Office of International Affairs) and Dr. Katarzyna Maniszweska (Vice-Rector for International Relations of CC) attended the ceremony at Room 317 A-B, 3rd floor of UAI, on Friday (11/8). During the event, the signing moment also has been witnessed by Dr. Heri Herdiawanto, S.Pd., M.Si. (Dean of Faculty of Social and Political Science of UAI) and Dr. Pawel Maranowski (The Vice-Rector for Student Affairs of CC) earlier from the previous event (3/8).
In the opening remarks, Prof. Asep said the seminar is the result of today’s agreement. He expressed his thanks to CC and Universiti Teknologi Mara Malaysia (UiTM) for being involved in this crucial agenda. As the previous event was conducted successfully between CC, UiTM, and UAI, he invites everyone to make another one today. He said that everyone already knew about how important the role of communication is in our life. Therefore, by having the continuity for the last agenda, I confidently believe it will complete everything about our understanding towards communication and its role as a good citizen.
Following up the last international seminar about Communication, Diversity, and its Trivial: A Dialogue among Poland, Malaysia, and Indonesia (I) on Aug 3, 2023, UAI invites three speakers from three countries around the world at this chance. Firstly, Dr. Katarzyna brings her concern on Ethics in Journalism & Media Literacy. She explains that there is a lot of journalism and media that can be found today such as information, education, entertainment, fourth estate (fourth power), agenda setting, and politikvermittlung (policy transfer/political education). Every media has its own ethics that must be followed. She, then, elaborated that citizen (civic) journalism is situated in community life as opposed to newspapers, where the journalists are in, or even part of the action as opposed to detached spectators. It leads people often use video and pictures to give voice to oppressed citizen groups, and post videos are cloud-based platforms like YouTube for the rest of the world to see. This can also be used with blog-based approaches.
“Media literacy refers to all the technical, cognitive, social, civic and creative capacities that allow us to access and have a critical understanding of and interact with media. These capacities allow us to exercise critical thinking, while participating in the economic, social and cultural aspects of society and playing an active role in the democratic process. Being a citizen journalist allows us to have a great power but it requires great responsibility.”
Dr. Katarzyna
Apart from that, Dr. Katarzyna adds that the ethics of journalism (Deontology of journalism) involves three things which do not harm; great power comes with great responsibility; and the media can directly influence the safety and security of the citizens, especially when reporting on terrorism, war, conflicts, protests etc. Furthermore, she emphasized that journalist’s covering terrorism are being objective and in line with rules set in the journalistic codes of ethics as well as citizen journalists in social media following the ethical guidelines are still questioned. To address this issue, she suggests two options which are Public-Private Partnership; implementation of ethical guidelines by the mainstream media; and education (critical media literacy). Moreover, to make it more reliable, everyone needs to know three steps to identify fake news, by Applying critical scrutiny to a report rather than forwarding it right away; checking the sources and sender of the message; and using fact checks.
Secondly, Dr. Ahlam Binti Abdul Aziz (Associate Professor at Faculty of Communication and Media Studies at UiTM) discusses the Fascination of TikTok Influencers towards Shaping Viewers’ Buying Culture. She highlighted that TikTok provides a variety of commercial capabilities, which includes video editing, analytics, adverts, and more. People can connect their personal account into TikTok business at the same time. Based on her survey results, there are four reasons why people follow TikTok influencers and data showed that 35% (Creative inspiration), 5% (Envy), Authenticity (37%), and 23% (Consumerism). This leads to TikTok influencers have their persuasive power as they have built a reputation for their knowledge and expertise on a specific topic. Afterwards, by having the rapid changes in buying culture the world today has moved to the millennial era, whereby social media has become a part of life, “influencers” are no longer aligned among social media viewers. Therefore, she sums up that it shows that influencers have a lot of advantages that can be adapted to shape buying culture.
Thirdly, Dr. Damayanti Wardyaningrum (Senior Lecturer of Communication for Master Program) talks about Gen Z and its Media Consumer Trend in Indonesia. She considers four points which are background and characteristic and of each generation, communication of each generation, business changing, and communication challenge for Gen Z. She stated that there are five characteristics of baby boomers (1943-1964), generation x (1965-1980), generation Y (1980-1995), Generation Y (1980-1995), and especially for Generation Z (1997-2012). As today future leaders mostly come from those who are from Gen Z, she said that everyone who is born between those years typically has a sense of humor, light, simple, and expressive as well as transparent in showing their opinion in social media. Thereafter, they also have strengths such as being very comfortable with technology, interacting with social media, more creative and quickly, and can be a content creator as their profession. Nevertheless, there are some issues in using the internet for them from having emotional feelings, receiving manipulative information (hoax), and etc. Therefore, having the ethics of communication can help everyone to deal with not only analog but also digital communication.
On that occasion, in the discussion session, there are some questions that are addressed to the speakers. They are how to place as a reader in dealing with all news portals which have different ideologies, perspectives, or even alignments towards certain parties as one of the things that could prevent the misunderstanding and the spread of false knowledge is education and on a higher-level education could be in a form of training for journalists (Radya Cantika, Student of Arab Language and Culture), the most problematic things that you have faced for Gen Z (Rusma Adam, Exchange Student of Prince of Songkla University at UAI), the power of influencers to use their power in educating media literacy, and how to take actions as influencers if they make unreliable information in social media.
Finally, the moderator, Ruvira Arindita, S.I.Kom., M.Si. (Secretary of Communication Department) concludes that three perspectives among Poland, Malaysia, and Indonesia have shown that communication runs every aspect in our lives. In spite of being very challenging no matter the era you are categorized in, it is very important to be responsible for what we use our power in the media for communication. Specifically, influencers can use their power to educate their followers digitally and if they make mistakes, they can acknowledge that and be aware to correct that. Accordingly, the variety of every part in life can be solved by communication from ethics in journalism & media literacy, analyzing buying culture in social media, and media consumer trends for the youth. This has proved that communication is indeed crucial but in a wise way. (TSH)