Yogyakarta, 13 July 2019—Fisipol Welcomes was held for 2 days, from the 13th to the 14th of July 2019. This event was opened by Erwan Agus Purwanto as the Dean of Fisipol. “This written exam is the first step to achieve your dreams”, he stated in his opening remarks. Afterwards, Aruna Paksi Pradana, the chairman of the organizing committee, also presented his opening speech. He conveyed that Fisipol Welcomes is one of Fisipol’s focus activities.Fisipol Welcomes is Fisipol’s annual event that is held during UGM’s admission exams. In 2018, Fisipol Welcomes was held twice, once during the Joint Entrance Selection of State Universities (SBMPTN) and also during UGM’s independent admission exam (UTUL). For this year, this event is held once and was focused on assisting the participants of UGM’s independent admission exam.

This event was free of charge and was open to all prospective students that have been registered to participate in this exam. Fisipol provided several facilities, such as accommodation, breakfast and motivation classes for students of both natural science and social science spheres. Around 140 students that hailed from various parts of Indonesia benefited from this event.

Rani Linggar, a 19-year-old exam participant from Temanggung, conveyed that this event greatly motivated her in preparing her admission exam. She stated that Fisipol Welcomes 3.0 has positively impacted her before and during the exam. She recommended that this event to be held again in the future. In her opinion, the free accommodation, food and transportation has reduced the burden of the participants and has helped them to focus solely on the exam. read more

Yogyakarta, 10 July 2019—Collaborations with foreign universities are important for any university.  Professor Vanessa Lemm and Mr. David Nettlefold, representatives from Flinders University, Australia, visited Fisipol UGM to strengthen the relationship between UGM and Flinders University. Furthermore, the two representatives were accompanied by Dr. Priyambudi Sulistiyanto, a senior lecturer from the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Science of Flinders University.Professor Lemm stated that this opportunity can establish further collaborations between UGM and Flinders University. Erwan Agus Purwanto, the Dean of Fisipol UGM, expressed his gratitude for the existing collaborations between the two universities. Erwan was accompanied by several lecturers of Fisipol UGM, such as Dr. Poppy Sulistyaning Winanti, M.P.P, Msc., Dr. Nur Rachmat Yuliantoro, M.A (IR), Dr. M. Najib Azca, and Dr. Hendrie Adjie Kuswono.

Flinders University teaches five languages within its programmes, in which Indonesian is the only Asian language that is taught at Flinders University. Professor Lemm also presented several other programmes, such as Creative Arts programme that teaches film, dance and drama.

This presentation was followed by a discussion between the faculty members of both universities. Future collaborations are open for the 6 departments of Fisipol. The Department of Communication Studies considered to collaborate with Flinders University’s Creative Arts programme, as this department has recently opened an International Undergraduate Programme (IUP). In addition, the Department of Sociology also planned to start Social Transformation studies with Flinders University. read more

Yogyakarta, 1 July 2019—After the inauguration of the Digilib Café, Fisipol UGM’s digital library is now officially open for all faculty members. This digital library was built under a cooperation between Fisipol UGM and Bank Mandiri. This soft launching event was attended by several guests and students.

The event, which took place in Digilib Café, was opened by Erwan Agus Purwanto, the Dean of Fisipol UGM. “Having a digital library has always been my dream in the past four years. I thought that this was a mad idea, as we didn’t have the necessary capital. However, after cooperating with various stakeholders and Bank Mandiri, this digital library is finally complete and currently is the first digital library in Indonesia,” Erwan stated. read more

Yogyakarta, 1 July 2019—The Center for Digital Society of Fisipol UGM recently published a social media research. This research was conducted by Treviliana Eka Putri, M. Fauzi Ananta, Masgustian, and Wava Carissa P., and focused on Instagram and Twitter. This research analysed the popularity of the 34 ministers and focused on aspects such as the number of searches on the name of the ministers, the number of followers and the number of Retweets. This research analysed the personal accounts of the ministers, not the official accounts of their ministries. read more

Yogyakarta, 26 June 2019—In the field of technology, artificial intelligence (AI) has brought tremendous positive impacts to our daily lives. Three researchers from the Center for Digital Society (CfDS) covered this issue on the 13th session of the Digital Future Discussion (Difussion), entitled “How Intelligent is Artificial Intelligence?” on Wednesday at Warunk Upnormal Gejayan. According to Theodore Great, AI is useful in the health sector, as it can collect medical records and create conclusions from them. In the future, it’s expected that AI can help doctors to diagnose diseases. In music, AI can also create artificial singers, such as the Instagram star Miquela Sousa. “However, AI still cannot match human musicians, as it cannot replicate human social life,” Great conveyed. AI’s algorithms can easily decipher our music preferences and hobbies by analysing our behaviours on the internet and on social media. Afterwards, Janitra Haryanto focused on the role of AI in politics. Today, AI can be used to handle political contents, managing campaigns and administering the flow of information, as well as testing a political figure’s integrity. In fact, a robot politician can represent the Prime Minister in New Zealand. The public claimed that robots can receive and manifest their aspirations better. Meanwhile, Anisa Pratita Mantovani covered the role of AI in law. She explained that in Singapore, robots can replace traditional human judges in order to avoid emotional biases. Through arranged algorithms, robot judges can formulate fair decisions. “Unlike humans, robots are free from emotional influences, hence making them more objective and just”, Tita stated. AI is indeed useful and has made life relatively easier for us. However, the use of AI requires a strict set of control and regulations. This is essential in order to make AI as effective as possible, while minimizing its negative impacts at the same time.

Hong Kong, 7 June 2019—The New. Now. Next Media Conference (N3Con) 2019 was held by the Asian Chapter of the Asian American Journalists Association from the 30^th of May until the 2^nd of June 2019 in Hong Kong. This conference took place at the University of Hong Kong, Google Hong Kong and Bloomberg Hong Kong. This year’s N3Con was entitled “Covering Asia’s New Order”, which emphasized on the importance of Asia in the future of the media industry.

N3Con featured tens of guest speakers from various international media, such as Wenxin Fan (reporter at the Wall Street Journal), Eulaine Kurtenbach (the editor of the Associated Press), Motoko Rich (the Tokyo Bureau Chief of The New York Times), Shibani Mahtani (reporter at the Washington Post), Roger Clark (the Vice President of CNN International), Richard C. Paddock (reporter at the New York Times), Enda Curran (reporter at Bloomberg News) and many others. To support students worldwide, N3Con 2019 and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism established a fellowship program. This fellowship was granted to three students from all over the world to participate in the N3Con. read more

Yogyakarta, 22 May 2019—The Creative Hub (C-Hub) of Fisipol UGM held another sharing session event, which took place in Block 71 co-working space. Representatives from Amalan and Bantu were the main speakers in Wednesday’s sharing session.

This event was opened by Matahari Farransahat by introducing the 2 projects of C-Hub; Talent Pitching and Social Entrepreneurship Academy (AKM). AKM’s programmes can be accessed through MOOC. C-Hub was established in 2018 with the aim of spreading the awareness for social entrepreneurship through know-how. read more

Yogyakarta, 21 May 2019—CfDS Fisipol UGM released a research entitled “The 10 Most Influential Political Figures.” On Twitter, Prabowo’s influencers clearly dominated the topic of the 2019 General Election, with 8 out of 10 figures hailing from his side. However, President Joko Widodo was the most popular political figure, with a total of 5.67 million engagements in Twitter.

This press conference was held on BC 201 room, with Treviliana Eka Putri and Iradat Wirid as the speakers. Both speakers also took part in this research. The data show that the amount of engagements on Twitter correlates with the personalization of the Tweets. Thus, political figures such as Prabowo and Ma’ruf Amin were not present in the list of the 10 most influential political figures. “From our findings, Tweets with a high amount of personalization, such as idioms and typical tones from each political figure, tend to have high engagements”, as stated by Iradat, one of the researchers in CfDS. read more

Yogyakarta, 20 May 2019—This year’s Ramadan in Fisipol (RDF), which lasted for two weeks, was officially closed. The closing ceremony was entitled “Ramadan, Self-Improvement, Social Improvement and National Unity.” This event was held at the West Hall of Fisipol UGM and was led by Purwo Santoso, a professor from the Department of Politics and Government.

RDF was closed by Wawan Mas’udi, the Vice Dean of Fisipol. Drum beating and a percussion orchestra enlivened this closing ceremony. Wawan appreciated the spirit of unity and inclusivity contained in RDF through the collaboration of all elements in Fisipol. “This reflects the actions of prophet Muhammad, which reached out to all elements of the society in order to improve it,” Wawan conveyed. read more

Yogyakarta, 20 May 2019—The ASEAN Studies Center (ASC) of Fisipol UGM held Bincang ASEAN (ASEAN Talks), which was entitled “East Timor’s Accession to ASEAN; Prospects and Challenges.” This event was held at room BB 208 at Fisipol UGM, and featured Dio Herdiawan Tobing, S.IP, L.LM, a researcher at ASC, as the speaker.

This event was opened with a discussion surrounding the relations between Indonesia and East Timor. Since its independence, the political situation in East Timor has been relatively unstable. According to Dio, one of the most important matters in East Timor is the issue of human rights. “In East Timor, press freedom is very limited. There are more Indonesian TV channels than Timorese TV channels there,” Dio stated. read more