Yogyakarta, May 13th 2020- FISIPOL UGM’s Center for Digital Society (CfDS) held a discussion session about the digital world. The discussion was streamed through the Instagram live feature on 4 pm to 5 pm. It was presented by Noel. In this opportunity, the topic was “The Social Media Now: Does it Bring Positive or Negative Effect?”, this event was open for everyone.
The event garnered a pretty big interest amongst Instagram audiences. The audiences gave also gave their opinion about the topic discussed, which was about social media. There were four people that joined CfDS’s live Instagram; Danis Fahreza, Gehang Ghofari, Anaqduanaiko, dan Arindaputri.
According to Danis Fahreza, Gehang Ghofari, dan Arinda Putri, the existence of social media gives positive effects. This opinion was based on their own experience. The positive effect felt by Danis is related to how social media makes his work easier. According to Gehang, social media makes it easier to spread information. The same thing was also said by Arinda. According to her, educational accounts – such as zerowaste and mental health related accounts – is a positive impact that can be felt by all social media user.
However, according to Danis and Gehang, there are also some negative effects of social media. Danis said that the existence of social media can distract him from his work. Gehang explained that social media’s algorithm is negative because it allows a limited amount of information to get to the user. Gehang gave an explanation which is the Reymar Martin social media bullying case. Gehang believed that those sort of cases are something that negatively impacts a lot of people, be it the victim or social media users.
A different experience was elaborated by Anaqduaniko. He believed that social media gives a negative effect. That effect can be seen through the hoax news that have been spreading around in the midst of this pandemic. The same comment is also given by diananann. For her, the information overload in social media makes it harder to find a more accurate source. Therefore, digital literacy is needed by the society in order to sift through information in social media.
To close the discussion, Noel gave a summary of the talk. He said that social media can be both negative and positive. In this case, the impact is dependent on how individuals use social media. Therefore, social media user needs to be wise in using the existing platforms in order to maximize the positive impact.