Yogyakarta, August 14th 2020—‘Media and the Motion of Power (Relation) in Corona Pandemic Era’ became the theme that brought by the Department of Communication Science in its regular online discussion, Ngopi #6 which presented two internal speakers, they were the lecturers of the Department of Communication Science, FISIPOL UGM. Dr. Dian Arymani and Budi Irwanto, Ph.D. This discussion which was held last Friday became interesting because the theme was based on conditions in today’s society and was selected through academic reflexivity.In the beginning of this online discussion, the moderator Nyarwi Ahmad, Ph.D., a lecturer of the Department of Communication Science UGM, gave an intermezzo that with the change in activity which to this day still depends on online sources, it indirectly empowered the media. For the examples, there was a change of identity, the information overload, so that without realizing it, the media often became a reference which used to form a reality that is easy to accept in this difficult situation.
For Dian, the presence of a pandemic in the midst of people’s survival has given a lot of tendencies to adapt by making changes. In this case, Dian said that this pandemic at least had brought up a shock at the spilled information that the public consumes every day with the different absorption proportion of the media. Basically, people are required to carry out old things by adapting to new and different ways (new ways of doing old things). Related to the absorption of information which tended to be large in this pandemic time, Dian referred to the Deluze’s thought which revealed that every structure did not have an absolute truth. Which was, in this case, the presence of media also brought informations that have various truths. Or in this case, it could be said that the public becomes the party that captures information by reference from everywhere.
More than that, Dian also explained that if it was connected to this pandemic, Deluze’s concept could be a framework to see that the truth which is possessed by the media is a form of the existence of the will of power which is possessed by each media. Meanwhile, Budi Irwanto in responding to the motion of the media power relation in this pandemic referred to Metz’s thought about interface which could be a source of manipulation. It means, in this case, the screen or interface became a container where each individual could do their activities by doing new things virtually. And without realizing it, the screen which was captured by us was a resemblance of the image that sometimes did not give us the real picture of reality. With that interface, we met with many identity productions such as the introduction of the terms ODP and OTG. The system seems to be producing new identities through the media and this stimulates the birth of a social stigma for these new identities.
Basically, the movement of the media during this pandemic seems to be a paradox. On one hand, the media became an information distributor that always gives updates related to pandemic’s information. But, gradually, the production of information that is booming every day will also cause panic and fatigue for the community. Moreover, it became worse because of the statements of government officials which were sometimes contradictory, it will make information consumption becomes boring and avoided. Nevertheless, the role of the media on the other hand can also be a power that helps build various social movements in the name of social solidarity which are formed without looking at certain identities with the aim of helping one another.
The existence of the media, which was quite booming during this pandemic, could not be separated from people’s lives. The reason is, as consumers, our society will clearly always need certainty of information from sources that can produce information. And from this, the role of the media is expected to be a connector for accurate and valid information. Also, the community is also expected to be able to balance the process of absorbing information by forming criticality by forming a spirit of literacy.