Jakarta (ANTARA News) - The government expects the role of academics and practitioners engaged in communication to build good communication patterns in cyberspace, Director General of Information and Public Communication at the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology Rosarita Niken Widiastuti said.

This was stated at the opening of the National Conference on Research and Community Service in Communication Studies (KNP2K) recently held by London School of Public Relations (LSPR) Jakarta, according to a statement received by Antara here on Wednesday.

Widiastuti, who was present as a keynote speaker at the conference, stressed the importance of building good communication in cyberspace.

According to her, the number of information disseminated on twitter in one minute is 3.3 million, and there are 29 million information delivered via WhatsApp.

"The question is whether the large number of information has value, given that the information distributed among people contains negative messages. So, it is expected that academics and practitioners engaged in communication could provide solutions to this problem," Widiastuti stated.

She noted that the pattern of communication in cyberspace today is "10 to 90," meaning that 10 percent are creators and 90 percent are audience.

"Ten people actively provide information, and 90 active people share and reproduce the information, which is sometimes not always positive," she noted.

She pointed out some facts on the use of internet in Indonesia that need to be reviewed by academics and practitioners in order to develop right solutions.

"The use of internet in Indonesia shows that four out of 10 people who are active on social media can live without cell phones for a maximum of seven minutes," she added.

Widiastuti added that people access the internet on an average of eight to 11 hours a day, while the reading interest of Indonesian people is ranked 60th out of 61 countries, and reading newspapers is only for 12 to 15 minutes a day.

The conference, organized by LSPR Jakarta with a theme "Synergy of Strategic Communication for Public Education," was the first national conference to synergize the results of research and community service.

The conference is expected to build synergy among various sides to create research-based community service and provide understanding on communication studies, including solutions to problems on communication in social media.

Editing by R. Nasution

Reporter: Libertina W. Ambari
Editor: Bambang Purwanto
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