Suara Kota: Youth Citizen Journalism Website Based on Local Culture, Research, and Community Development to Increase Public Prosperity in Indonesia

”… Selama masih ada ratap tangis di gubuk-gubuk pekerjaan kita belum selesai! Berjuanglah terus dengan mengucurkan sebanyak-banyak keringat..”

(Bung Karno)

Background of Knowledge

Indonesia is well-known as a rich country with about 17.000 islands stretched from Sabang to Merauke. It has various local languages, local cultures, local art performances, local heritage even World level cultural products such as Batik that has been certified by UNESCO since 2009. From those assets we often imagined that Indonesian people will live in prosperity and got much insurance in many aspects such as education and health. But what we see today is the opposite of our expectation regarding to the role of country. From Bappenas (2012), we know that the number of poverty reached until 12.49 percents. Moreover, the number of children of elementary school that do not continue their study reached until 72.12 percents (Dikdas, 2001).

UU No. 22 Year 1999 and then revised by UU No. 32 Year 2004 about Otonomi Daerah proved us to maximize the potency of local region. Each region in Indonesia has responsibility to develop their land through all aspects such as politics, economics, culture etc. However, in fact, from the years since this rule has been implemented until now, the development in many cities does not run well, but even worse from day to day. This was caused by some factors. First, it is because of bad birocracy and corruption committed by the leader in some regions, like Sragen, Karanganyar, etc. Second, most of regions in Indonesia are not used to entrepreneurship habit yet. Most of them do the development using APBD without thinking more of how to effectively use their local potency. The effect is the development still stuck and the autonomy was not achieved as well. Third, the local people in the region have not had awareness yet about how to deal with development problem. Most of citizens think that country’s development should belong to government’s responsibility, neither for civil people.

Proposed Solution

From some problems mentioned above, the writer proposes solution after looking the effect of modernity nowadays. As we know, the globalization era makes people engaged to Information and Communication Technology. Everyday people frequently use social media like Facebook, Twitter, Weblog, etc. One of the phenomena that rise because of social media is citizen journalism. Citizen journalism is when private individuals do essentially what professional reporters do - report information. That information can take many forms, from a podcast editorial to a report about a city council meeting on a blog. It can include text, pictures, audio and video. But it is basically all about communicating information of some kind (Rogers, 2013).

Citizen journalism actually has many advantages instead of serve people’s actualization need. They are information sharing and also mass online discussion. From citizen journalism, sometimes we know that people do care about their surrounding environment and they want to make betterment for their region. Suara Kota is a citizen journalism website based on local culture, research, and community development. 

By using Suara Kota, people in a city could make a report, upload the videos of their local culture performances, etc. The effects could be different if they use personal blog/ website because Suara Kota is set to be systemic. One person can do one good thing, but together they can make a change. There are several steps for establishing Suara Kota. 

First, we need to initiate a youth conference. The purpose of conducting youth conference is to gather all youth from same region in order to formulate same vision. The value of this conference is how to make youth live, learn, and then back to Indonesia, especially to their city. Youth may learn anywhere they want; besides they should have big nationalism and sense belonging toward Indonesia and their city. If they have this ideology, the development in Indonesia will not be centered in capital city.

Second, what we have to do is to organize the crew. Later, our program will divide to three areas, which are journalism activity, research, and community development. Youth that gather in conference will choose to what area they will belong to, depend on their passion and their purpose. Each area will have their own crew but they coordinate each other.

Third, there is journalism activity. Actually, everyone in Indonesia even abroad can contribute to this activity if they fill the requirements. Because this is city’s project, so only news about city “A” that will be selected in Suara Kota “A” website. This is journalism activity based on local culture. So, not all news can be reported. For example, crime news is not match to this website. What we want is to promote Indonesia clearly, effectively, and completely, even until the smallest elements it has. By previewing Suara Kota, a city can take a lesson and support each other.

The status quo is even Bali or Solo as the cultural city in Indonesia, they do not have a website to specially promote their local culture. We often got difficulties when we want to search our local culture uniqueness from many regions in Indonesia. For example, maybe you know traditional food from Solo or Bali, but not all of you know the history of it, right? Unfortunately, we are often familiar about tourism bad news like the lack of good facilities in our tourism object. Since this is very important, Suara Kota should be established as soon as possible through citizen journalism activity. 

Fourth, based on the data we got from journalism activity, we can do research. One important element in doing research is needs analysis. By citizen’s reportage from Suara Kota, we can conduct a research about how to make betterment for our local heritage and local culture. The output of the research can be product and system. As mentioned above, there are teams for doing this research.

Fifth, as final project is community development. The results from the research can inspire us to make a community development activity. By community development, the traditional culture from each region can be performed annually to increase public prosperity. The writer sees that the government website is not active to give information that is needed by public. This idea of citizen journalism website is also born because of observational activity.

Furthermore, this idea cannot be applied well if there is no coordination between government, private sector, and of course citizen network. The government should give support of costs and legal policy. Private sector should give support of creative program   and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) based on local culture activity. The last but not least, the citizen is the most important agent to do this vision. If there is no awareness from citizen to develop their region, so this idea means nothing.

Conclusion and Recommendation

Suara Kota is an effective way to increase prosperity in Indonesia. Digital world phenomena nowadays should make us think creatively how technology gives us benefit, not just the bad effects. By using technology, we can share and be connected with each other, we can promote our local culture globally and we can educate citizen to be more aware about our country.

The challenge of this project is not all youth can stay in the city. They have to learn in other city and be restricted by time they had. But through the system of this project, everyone can take their part on distance project. By establishing Suara Kota, everyone in the world can watch how beautiful Indonesia is.

Finally, let us think once again: If one person can do a good thing, so together we can make a change. All people should take into account of Indonesian’s vision as mentioned in our UUD 1945, the fourth paragraph. Long life Indonesia!