On 27-30 August, the 32nd National Science Week for University Students (PIMNAS) was held at Universitas Udayana, Bali. Three Fisipol students from the batch of 2017: Maulida “Ifa” Afifatu Tsalitsi, Adhika Trisliantama (Department of Politics and Government) and Miftah Farid Mahardika (Department of Sociology), have successfully won silver medals in the Student Creativity Programme (PKM). On Friday (6/9), Ifa shared us her experience of participating at the 32nd PIMNAS.
According to her, the process to participate in this competition was not easy, as PIMNAS is a prestigious competition for all university students from all across Indonesia. This is because, PIMNAS is organized by the Directorate General of Learning of the Ministry of Research, Technology and Higher Education of the Republic of Indonesia. Furthermore, the results of this competition are one of the components of a university’s accreditation. In PIMNAS, she competed against 60 teams from all over Indonesia. Ifa and her team have prepared everything from November 2018.
After conducting numerous revisions, Ifa and her team participated in this competition with a research project entitled ““Komputasional Propaganda dalam Kampanye Pemilihan Presiden 2019” (Computational Propaganda in Political Campaigns During the 2019 Presidential Election). This research project focused on how propaganda was conducted on social media during the election.
In order to obtain the quantitative data, Ifa and her team used big data analytics in social media. Meanwhile, for the qualitative data, she conducted interviews from the campaign teams of both presidential candidates and the Drone Emprit political consultancy group. These interviews were done in Jakarta. This research was conducted in a linear manner. Her team’s hard work was paid off with the silver medals that they have won for UGM.
“After this victory, we were offered by the Faculty of Law to participate in a conference. We would like to discuss the rules for digital political campaign in the form of a policy brief. We plan to do this in Japan,” Ifa conveyed optimistically. She realized that her team’s victory in Bali wasn’t the end and should not be celebrated excessively. She planned to further improve her research project in order to contribute to the public.