Yogyakarta, November 26th 2022–Ajisaka Festival is held again by Fisipol UGM Department of Communication. This yearly event was on a hiatus for two years due to the pandemic. Before going to the main event in 2023, the Ajisak Festival held a series of pre-event that were also interesting and substantive.
The Ajisaka Festival is a yearly competition held by the Department of Communication and consisted of five types of competition which are Nakula (Youth Research), Kresna (Cinema Creation Competition), Arjuna (Ajang Sejuta Warna), Sadewa (Sayembara Dewa Pariwara), and Prahasa (PR Competition). All of these are communication competitions meant for high school students. Since its first event in 2013, this festival has always picked a meaningful theme.
Gender equality has been a hot topic for the last five years. As a part of digital development, the digital world becomes a place for perpetrators to commit it’s crimes, including sexual violence. That is why the main theme of the 2023 Ajisaka Festival is online gender-based violence (OGBV). The pre-event, competitions, and the Candrimuka night all try to communicate the same message about the OGBV issue.
One of the Ajisaka pre-event held on Saturday (26/11) was the Communication Workshop: Janamejaya with the theme “Gender Equity: Encoding Messages Through The Lens of Social Media”. “There is a concept we know as gender stereotypes, which is a general perspective or prejudice about the attribute, characteristic, or roles that women or men should have. There are two questions that we need to talk about when it comes to gender stereotypes, which are what really shapes gender stereotypes and why gender stereotypes are a problem,” said Mashita Pitaloka as a lecturer in communication studies when she elaborated her material about gender equality.
After the seminar, Festival Ajisaka will bring more exciting events. Look forward to more event lineups from the 2023 Ajisaka Festival that will bring the best creation from creative youths nationally.