Yogyakarta, April 24th 2020 – BRIWork FISIPOL UGM held another event of ‘Ngobrol Bareng Populi’ on Friday (24/4). #BRIWORKNgobrolBareng brought a theme ‘Alternative Media Trend in the Eyes of Populi’ through live feature of @briwork.jogja and @populi.co Instagram. The speaker of this event was Risaza Madani or Eris from BRIWork and Geraldy Sam, as the founder of Populi. #BRIWORKNgobrolBareng was the inaugural event in pandemic. This event started at 04.40 p.m.
BRIWork is the result of collaboration of three stakeholders, they are BRI Bank, UGM, and Conclave. BRI Bank as the banking facilities and service providers who initiated to build co-working space in the campuses, UGM as the land provider (in FISIPOL UGM), and Conclave as the service provider of co-working space services and routine activities that support millennials creative ideas. “BRIWork FISIPOL UGM brought a theme about how the banking affair can be integrated with co-working space, so in the co-working space there is banking affair, there is a kind of general activity,” Eris said as he described the big picture of BRIWork.
While the Populi is an alternative media that will present interesting news by focusing in politics and lifestyle. The objective is not only spreading informations, but also educate people. One of the efforts is by given the educative and positive contents. Populi Media as the inter-community bridge to understand about the Indonesian democracy flow. “A good democracy state has to be created with people of good intellectual as well,” Geraldy said.
After being introduced to BRIWork and Populi more closely, both speakers explained the definition of alternative media in general. According to the founder of Populi, alternative media is a renewal in the digital era that refers to media unrest in seeing a phenomenon or environment, that the way media brings information is boring. Alternative media is the opposite of mainstream media on the television or internet, such as Metro TV, TV One, etc. Mainstream media tends to limit its topic according to the agreement between them and the speakers, meanwhile the alternative media is more fluid, it tends not to limit the topic, it means they try not to cut the contents.
“If we refer to Populi, it likes to make an infographic because we want to bring political education for a good democracy that is fun and easy to read. And here, if you look the narration with black and white writing and compare it with infographic with its interesting pictures and colors, it would be different too,” Geraldy explained.
Every alternative media has references for their platform to develop their potencies. So does Populi. In this case, Eris asked about the direction of Populi as an alternative media. “For Populi, these days we focus on Instagram and YouTube. The other alternative is, from the YouTube video, I took only the audio and I put it on Spotify, it became a podcast. So you can see the teaser on Instagram, if the video is a bit long, I put it on YouTube, then the audio I put on Spotify,” Geraldy answered.
As an alternative media, the managers certainly created a content that was not boring and different from others. Geraldy said that Populi was determining the formulation as their feature to be different from the other alternative media, by using up to date designs and infographics in its contents. Besides to attract the readers, infographics serve as a bridge to make it easier for them to explain some knowledges to the public, because not all of the people like to read information in the form of a text. “Do not let those who like to scroll and explore Instagram not getting knowledge, because of that we make infographics,” Geraldy said.
The credibility of a news can be seen from its sources, Populi as a new media always puts credits or sources in their contents. The data that Populi processed is accompanied by credible source that they put on the left corner. Until now, the closest agenda Populi was to do the grand launching. And when the COVID-19 pandemic gone, they will make useful contents that present political figures and inspirational figures, and they will give a good education to the public. “I hope that Populi Media could become an alternative media that is loved by the people and netizen and could give the news that will clear the minds of people to create a better Indonesia,” Geraldy said. This chit-chat event hoped it could give insights to the audience about what the alternative media is. In the end, this event was closed at 05.30 p.m.