Yogyakarta, 30 July 2019—GEO Fisipol UGM’s SMU-UGM Summer Course Program was opened on the 28^th of July. This event was participated by students from both Singapore Management University (SMU) and Universitas Gadjah Mada. Participants of this event took part in cultural activities provided by GEO.

On the second day, the 30^th of July, the participants learned about small and medium-sized enterprises in Indonesia and ASEAN. This course also discussed regarding the 2025 ASEAN Economic Community. According to the course tutor, Dr. Dafri Agussalim, Gojek plays an important role in digitalising the Indonesian economy, particularly by supporting small and medium-sized enterprises. read more

Yogyakarta, 24 July 2019—With the rapid development of new technologies, the government must always keep up with the current pace in order to pursue its national interests. Different states have different capabilities, in terms of both technology and institutional oversight. Thus, CfDS tried to analyse the possibility of the establishment of the Ministry of Digital Affairs in Indonesia.

This research, which was entitled “Opportunities for the Establishment of the Ministry of Digital Affairs in Indonesia” and was presented by four researchers from CfDS: Anisa Pratita Kirana Mantovani, Anggika Rahmadiani, Theodore Great Aipasa, Janitra Haryanto and Sri Handayani Nasution. read more

Yogyakarta, 19 July 2019—The meeting between Jokowi and Prabowo at the Senayan MRT Station on the 13th of July triggered both positive and negative responses on Twitter, as revealed by the Center for Digital Society (CfDS) of Universitas Gadjah Mada last Friday.From the 13th to the 16th of July, 169,238 Tweets contained hashtags that support the reconciliation. According to Trevilliana Eka Putri, the researcher and also the manager of CfDS, only 15% of this amount were original Tweets. “The rest were Retweets and replies,” she stated.

21% of the Tweets that were supportive of the hashtag #03PersatuanIndonesia (#03UnityoIndonesia) were original. “It means that these posts were more decentralized, more people were willing to express their opinions by using that hashtag. Most of the pro-reconciliation Tweets featured “MRT”, “Indonesia”, “Jokowi”, “Prabowo” and “akhirnya” (at last) as keywords, showcasing the long-awaited reconciliation,” as stated by Paska Darmawan, Putri’s colleague.

On the other hand, there were also Tweets that disapproved the meeting between the two figures. Several popular hashtags were #0p0sisitanparek0nsiliasi (#theoppositionwillnotreconcile), #AniesBaswedanforpresident and #kampretakantetapberjuang (#thetadpoleswillcontinuetostruggle – “tadpole” is a derogatory term used to refer to Prabowo’s supporters), in which the number of original Tweets was 8%, 9% and 8% respectively. Furthermore, the hashtag #rekonsiliasirasaterasi (#shrimppastereconciliation) was consisted of 15% original Tweets. Several keywords in this side were “bantu” (help), “like”, “ayo” (let’s go) and “naikkan tagar” (raise the hashtag), as well as mention to other accounts. read more

Yogyakarta, 19 July 2019—The four day long 21st Biennial International Conference Of International Consortium  for Social Development had reached its conclusion and was offically closed by Manohar Pawar as the President of ICSD in Balai Senat, Gedung Pusat UGM.

In ICSD, various ideas and narration was brought by the 250 presenters from 28 countries. In the first day on Tuesday, the 16th of July, the conference gave spotlight on how bad Indonesia’s achievements on SDGs is, which was brought by a keynote speaker, Vivi Yulaswati as the National Director for Alleviating Poverty and Development of Social Welfare. read more

Jogjakarta, 15 July 2019 – The Department of Social Development and Welfare of FISIPOL UGM held the 21st Biennal International Conference Of International Consortium for Social Development (ICSD) titled “Strengthening Social Development to Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)”. The conference brought 250 presenters from 28 countries and took place from 16 July to 19 July in Universitas Gadjah Mada.

Manohar Pawar as the president of ICSD, who hails from Charles Sturt University Australia, expressed his appreciation for FISIPOL’s hard work in bringing ICSD’s international dialogue.  ICSD, that have been going on since the 1970s, has the main goal of building social consciousness on sustainable development. “Even though ICSD have been held in almost 50 years, ICSD is still relevant because of the various social problems that also increase. The most important point from ICSD is looking at the potential of human resource,” said Manohar Pawar. read more

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.