On July 1, 2019, The Thammasat University Library welcomed faculty representatives of the National Development University Veteran Jakarta (UPNVJ), Indonesia. The word Veteran was included in the university name because it was founded by veterans of Indonesia’s war of independence as a milestone in national educational development. Among recent outstanding international scholarly events at UPNVJ was the Jakarta International Conference on Social Sciences and Humanities (JICoSSH) last November, JICoSSH was organized by the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, UPNVJ.

The event theme was Nationalism, De-radicalization, Sustainability, and World Harmony in the Digital Era. The conference explored such critical issues as the poverty gap, the emergence of radical movement, and environmental degradation. Among subjects encompassed by the gathering were

• Strategic Communication for change, antiterrorism and deradicalization
• Cyberspace and radicalism
• Multiculturalism and nationalism
• The possibility of global integration in world harmony
• Media role in conflict resolution
• Contemporary nationalism
• The politics of nation building
• Sustainable development and world harmony
• Interfaith dialog and cooperation
• Nationalism between religion and secularism
• Nation-state and cosmopolitanism
• Dialogue of cultures and the future of world politics
• Ethnicity and nation-building in world politics
• Social media and digital culture
• Media literacy
• Media, radicalism and de-radicalization
• Language, indigenous knowledge and social harmony
• Law, Social harmony and sustainability
• International political economy
• Economic and sustainable development

Alert to online trends, UPNVJ announced last month that vloggers on YouTube with a minimum of 10,000 subscribers would be permitted to enroll at the university in a special achievement path admissions program, after committee screening to ensure positive content. Other skills that ensured admission for student applicants were outstanding athletic achievement, sustained service in high school student councils, and having memorized the Quran, the central religious text of Islam.

UPNVJ rector Dr. Erna Hernawati told The Jakarta Post:

We think YouTube is a great media to convey positive messages effectively to society. We want those accepted in the university to convey positive messages and influence society for the better…We will not accept those uploading provocative content. We will also test the applicants’ skills by requiring them to make a two-to three-minute video on campus. So, if you have 10,000 subscribers, you are not automatically admitted.

A more traditional academic knowledge entrance exam would remain as part of the admissions criteria.

The visiting group to the Pridi Banomyong Library on July 1 included Dr. Imam Haryanto, Lecturer of Law at the Faculty of Law, UPNVJ. Also among the visitors was Dr. Antar Venus of the Department of Management Communication, Faculty of Communication, UPNVJ. Dr. Venus currently serves as Dean of the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences of UPNVJ. He earned a bachelor’s degree in communication management at the Faculty of Communication Sciences, Padjadjaran University, Bandung, West Java, Indonesia and went on to graduate studies in Agricultural Development Communication at the Bogor Agricultural Institute before receiving a master of arts degree in international communication from Macquarie University Sydney Australia and a doctorate in communication science at Padjadjaran University.

He has studied communication and culture in Japan, among other international venues. Among his research interests are rhetoric, cybernetics, and sociopsychology. He sees communication science as a strategic skill and instrument to make communication systems and practices better.

As Thammasat University students know, the TU Faculty of Journalism and Mass Communication has a lively program in communication science. The TU Library offers a wide range of books on communications.

In 2013, the UPNVJ website quoted Dr. Venus in an interview:

Words have great power. They hurt. They cause conflicts. But with correct communication perspective, words also bring solution… Communication must arrive at its applicative and implicative levels… Being an auditor gets me to learn philosophy, organization and its culture, as well as to give training and recommendation for better communication approach… As an academic, I have great interest in knowledge. Grounded on its fundamental and critical nature as well as philosophical aspect, scientific explanation is believed to be the most reliable, instead of magical or supernatural understanding… I believe that communication is here to make us have a good quality of life, which is the objective of therapeutic communication.

The same year, he noted:

Communication through those words has tremendous strength. We can get sick because of words, can conflict because of words. But we can also solve problems with a communication perspective, namely with words…Even though communication must arrive at an applicative and implicative level… Here I learn from the theory, philosophy, culture of the organization, but also audit, even provide training, as well as provide recommendations to these institutions regarding the implementation of communication that should be done at the institution… As a member of an academic community, I am very interested in science. In college, the principle requires a lot of explanations from various perspectives of science, not magic or magic. And the most interesting thing… is teaching scientific explanations, especially in this field of communication. Scientific explanation will be interesting if it is associated with critical, fundamental, philosophical explanations, based on thinking skills… Communication must inspire and make our lives better. This is something that we can get in therapeutic communication.

The year before, on the UPNVJ website, Dr. Venus expressed his views on the importance of health communication development. At the time, over one-third of Indonesians were seeking medical care overseas in Singapore rather than be treated at home. Dr. Venus suggested:

The data is caused by consumer dissatisfaction with health communication services in Indonesia. In fact, MKEK itself also notes that the number of complaints against the medical profession continues to grow… According to research, people who listen to it, their blood pressure tends to be stable and go down. Likewise when doing jogging. Jogging together is better with jogging alone. Jogging while communicating will regenerate brain cells more than twice as much.

As a didactic instrument, Dr. Venus has created a YouTube instructional channel for students at UPNVJ. Among subjects discussed are how smartphones change human behavior, advertising as a communication activity, the development of trade in Indonesia from traditional barter systems to online sales, the history of games as a human pastime, and regulation and ethics of mass media as news and current information sources. He cites Uses and Gratifications Theory (UGT), developed by Elihu Katz and Jay Blumler, to understand why and how people actively seek out specific media to satisfy specific needs.

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)