The Rise of K-Popper's Political Awareness in Twitter and What It Means for All of Us

The Omnibus Law, which was passed on October 5, 2020, has discontented students and workers who protested on the streets. The ratification of the Omnibus Law has an effect on public opinion-raising activities, both those who support and who reject the ratification of the Omnibus Law, are crowded on Twitter social media. The active account of K-Poppers who took part became a line against the opinion of the Omnibus Law, so a question arises whether this is a phenomenon of the rise of political awareness of K-Poppers in Indonesia? This study analyzes the role of K-Poppers in socio-political movements in several countries globally, especially in Indonesia. The type of research used is a case study of the K-Poppers movement in the case of the ratification of the Omnibus Law as the subject in writing this paper. Collecting data using Social Network Analysis (SNA) and observing the activities of K-Poppers in Indonesia when parliament passed the controversial Omnibus Law. The results of this study indicate that Indonesian K-Poppers maximize their function as part of Indonesian citizens to express their political stance. They also showed their political involvement when creating hashtags, organizing other K-Pop crowds, and at the same time providing support to activists who rejected the Omnibus Law.

Interview with Professor Om Gurung

Professor Om Gurung is a senior anthropologist, an influencing intellectual, and a prominent public leader in Nepal. He served Tribhuvan University as a professor of anthropology for 36 years and headed the Central Department of Sociology/Anthropology for 13 years. Professor Gurung did his M. A. in History from Tribhuvan University in 1975, M. A. in anthropology from the University of Poona in 1980, and Ph. D. in Anthropology from Cornell University of Ithaca, New York in 1996. He is one of the founding members of the Central Department of Sociology/Anthropology at Tribhuvan University of Nepal. He has served as a visiting professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Liverpool John Moores University in the UK, Lille University in France, and the University of Sichuan in China. He is a visiting research fellow at the University of Bergen, Norway, and a guest lecturer at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, Oxford University, UK, China Institute of New School University, New York, the University of Mons, Belgium, the University of Heidelberg, Germany and Chinese University in Hong Kong. Professor Gurung was heavily engaged in various social, professional, and political organizations. He has made substantial scholarly and social contributions to the understanding of social and political issues of Nepal. As a promising intellectual leader of ethnic rights and politics of social inclusion in Nepal, he raised socio-political awareness among indigenous peoples of Nepal and mobilized them to assert their ethnic identity and cultural rights. He has a deep commitment to the development of anthropology and Nepali people.

Combating Disinformation in the European Union: Legal Aspects

Today, both Ukraine and European countries are subject to disinformation and foreign intervention in their domestic policies. Each democracy no matter its geography experiences its distinct vulnerabilities and respectively, reactions to foreign interference. It should be stated, the immediate responses to such challenges in most Western countries have been rare and sluggish, hampered by legal constraints and bureaucracy, and furthermore, they lacked a real political awareness of the problem or proof of its further impact. Foreign actors are increasingly using disinformation strategies to influence public debate, stir controversy and interfere in democratic decision-making. Responding to these new challenges, the European Commission has introduced a set of actions and tools to better regulate the digital ecosystem of the media and its participants, in particular, the formation and improvement of the legal framework to combat disinformation in the European information space. The researcher’s focus revolves around the European Union’s comprehensive approach to vigorous combating misinformation. The research data prove that since 2015, the EU has adopted a number of regulations to counter this information threat and the potential effects of foreign interference. In particular, in 2016 the EU adopted a document “Joint Framework on countering hybrid threats, a European Union response”, and “Action Plan against Disinformation”, respectively in 2018. These documents provide a baseline for understanding the diverse types of challenges other countries face and how they are addressing them. Consequently, a number of initiatives and projects of the European institutions, and the first worldwide self-regulatory “EU Code of Practice on Disinformation” issued in 2018 on a voluntary basis, have become main pillars of the EU. The Code identifies issues related to ensuring the transparency of political advertising, strengthening efforts to close active counterfeits. accounts, enabling users to report misinformation and access various news sources, while improving the visibility and reliability of authoritative content; enabling the research community to monitor disinformation on the Internet through access to these platforms, compatible with the confidentiality signed by the largest Internet platforms and social media (Google, Facebook, Twitter and Mozilla) in the framework of WMC self-regulation activities. It should be noted that the implementation of the “European Union Code of Practice on Countering Disinformation” has yielded ambiguous fruits. Self-regulation was the first logical and necessary step, but few stakeholders were fully satisfied with the process or its outcome, significant challenges remain for building trust through industry, governments, academia and civil society engagement.

Political Learning through a Social Media Network

This study tries to fill the knowledge theory gap on the impact of social media use in political discourse. This research examines social media's performance in political learning where it does not exist as part of classroom learning. Social media is differentiated between activities that do not involve political interaction directly and discussion with other users. This study develops a cross-sectional survey on undergraduate college students' representatives of the five biggest campuses in Bandung, Indonesia. A total of 977 students filled questionnaires. The results show political discussion through social media networks providing students' political learning. The more students discuss related politics through social media, the higher their level of political awareness becomes. Social media activities do not impact political learning, where these activities do not involve discussion with other users. This study shows that students obtain political learning through political discussion through their networks, not just through social media activities. Political learning through social media requires discussion related to politics. Besides, sex, age, and expenditure also affect students' political knowledge acquisition. The results have implications for conducting studies on specific platforms to confirm social media activities' impact according to each platform's characteristics.