Pekan Komunikasi 2011

This is the second time I was invited to be a speaker. It was in 2010 when I got a chance to talk about the use of social media as a tools for social change. This time, I talk about youth, social media and social movement in Seminar “You Are The Media: Virtual Discourse, Real Action” Media Matters

It was in 2008 when I was still in the college finishing my final thesis and organising this annual event, Pekan Komunikasi. Before the event be hold, I planned to attend this event which surprisingly I was invited to be a speaker. To be honest, I have problems with my self-esteem. Every time I am asked to perform in front of the public in general, I start to be nervous all day and couldn’t think any other thing than that. In addition, I would had a talk with Roby Muhamad, scientist in social network, Enda Nasution which people acknowledge him as Indonesia’s blogger president and Dian Noeh, senior vice president of Weberschanwick, a PR consultant. See? how’s on earth I have to speak in a panel with all of them?



A friend of mine, Afra and Aquino helped me to organise my speech by giving a lot of advices and materials. At the end, I feel that I have made the audience hypnotized by my deception :p. In this point, I am sure that my decision to be a lecturer in the future would be so exciting and challenging.



Okay, this is my point during my speech in Pekan Komunikasi:
Youth in Indonesia was conditioned to be passive toward social and political problems. One of the excess itself is they do not have a place to express their emotional feelings. We can’t blame them by labeling them as ignorant. This is the consequence of the policy made by oppressive regime, new order, to make youth voiceless and “tame”.

Youth were repressed and served by the luxury of fake development. With the growing significance of shopping mall around Jakarta, yes I’m writing from Jakarta’s perspective, how do we have another choice to express freely? One of the participant I ask that the place to go at the weekend is mall. I think this is wrong since we have a right to access public place which is rare in Jakarta.




The passive generation of youth can not be separated from the dynamics in the internal of civil society organisation itself which is the knowledge transfer from the senior to youth is still in limited number. Since they tend to ignore youth’s potentiality, they also think that youth are still kids which have a little knowledge. Are we?

Moreover, I also linked that school as a place to make agent of change in this country do not accomodate student’s needs. Since the school teacher tend to be conservative toward new ideas, any of the innovation from the student will be seen as naughty. Are we?

The nature of youth itself is try to find their identity since the system doesn’t support us to develop our potentiality we need another place to support us. In this case, the internet has come to be a promised land. It is relatively cheap, we are free to express what we want to and of course to participate in any social cause. This is the chance where young people could take place and be a part of social change since our established system does not support us to do so. There are a lot of social cause made by youth from local level up to transnational level. This is a new phenomenon which youth has started to be a part social change independently.

At the end of the session, one of speaker ask me how old I am when the 1998 riots happened and where do I work for. I was told not to give a shit to the new order regime and focus on how to develop myself in this new world. Is that a statement?

Even a big person doesn’t respect youth. Doesn’t s/he ever be a youth and being underestimated just because of his/her age? Doesn’t s/he ever felt that being underestimated in terms of age is sucks? At that moment I learnt a lot that most of older generation won’t accept what the younger generation says. No matter what is their latest education or even their big name as an open minded people.

Hey dear friend, you can feel this in your working place where younger people tend to be given a more technical job instead of conceptual job. What can you expect more from them, huh?

Overall, I got a lot of good news about the event, congratulations dear communication fellow! Big thanks for inviting me to this annual event. Wish that this event could be a regional event in South East Asia! :)

Photos: taken from the official facebook of pekan komunikasi