Jatinangor, May 18, 2023 – The Department of Communication Studies at the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Universitas Gadjah Mada, once again held the Ajisaka Festival. This year’s theme was “Agnia Abhipraya: Bringing the Light of Hope.” Through this overarching theme, it aimed to raise public awareness about the importance of communication in gender equality and the Sexual Violence Prevention Program (KBGO) through the #SatukanSuaraKitaSetara (#UniteOurVoicesEqual) campaign. Lydia Tesaloni M., Chelsea Anastasia, and Nadya Tari Putri Pagusa, who are journalism students from Fikom Unpad, achieved 3rd place in the homeless media competition.
The reason behind the Ajisaka UGM Festival adopting the KBGO theme is that the current digital era has opened up new opportunities for perpetrators of sexual harassment and violence to commit digital crimes. We can observe that cases of sexual objectification against women are increasingly prevalent. Participants were expected to convey messages to the public regarding KBGO through their works in each competition category.
Homeless media and podcast were two categories of the Arjuna Multicolored Image Competition, which is a branch of the journalism competition. In the homeless media competition, participants were challenged to design homeless media through Instagram with their respective strategies and tactics.
At the Ajisaka 2023 Festival, many students from the Faculty of Communication Studies at Universitas Padjadjaran won awards in various categories. One of the champions of the Ajisaka 2023 Festival was the journalism student team named Hippala. The Hippala team consisted of Lydia Tesaloni M., Chelsea Anastasia, and Nadya Tari Putri Pagusa. All members of this team are journalism students from Fikom Unpad, batch of 2020. The Hippala team won 3rd place in the Arjuna Competition Category of Homeless Media.
One of the members of the Hippala team, Lydia Tesaloni M., expressed that she gained many valuable lessons after participating in Ajisaka UGM 2023. For example, presenting their work in front of the judges and managing their emotions. As for the challenges faced during the competition, “The challenge was actually because we competed with our own friends. So correcting each other’s work was a bit uncomfortable. Apart from that, we also didn’t know how our competitors were, so we couldn’t gauge the quality our work needed to be,” Lydia said. Nevertheless, in the end, the Hippala team successfully won 3rd place in the Arjuna Competition Category of Homeless Media at the Ajisaka 2023 Festival. (Syawalika Azzahra)
