Boosting a Community Event on Social Media: Building Progressive

Public Engagement and Enthusiasm for Change - Study on Social

Movement Community in Jakarta

Ferane Aristrivani Sofian

, and Cindy Ayu Agustin

Marketing Communication Program, Communication Department, Faculty of Economic & Communication, Bina

Nusantara University, Jakarta, Indonesia 11480

Keywords: Community Event, Social Media Campaign, Public Engagement.

Abstract: The purpose of this study is to investigate the community motive in organizing an event, the stage of making

the event and how to use the social media in communicating about the event. This research is conducted

through qualitative descriptive approach by interviewing three members of Suara Disko Community and three

members of Running Rage Community. The results show that the motive of the event is to change the people’s

lifestyle concerning music for the Suara Disko community and to change the views on running sports for the

Running Rage Community. Stages of making the event consist of research, concept design, determination of

communication media and evaluation. The results of the investigation also show that Instagram is the most

effective social media used to build public engagement and enthusiasm.

1 INTRODUCTION

The presence of social media has a significant impact

on bringing the social change. One of them is the

increasing number of social movements conducted by

a community. It is great because it disseminates

information about ideology and its activities through

social media. Also, social media makes companies do

promotions, publications and help implement other

communication strategies efficiently.

From a system’s perspective, a community is

similar to a living creature, comprising different parts

that represent specialized functions, activities, or

interests, each operating within specific boundaries to

meet community needs (McCloskey, D. J.,

McDonald, M. A., Cook, J., Heurtin-Roberts, S.,

Updegrove, S., Sampson, D., Gutter, S., & Eder,

2011). Suara Disko Community and Running Rage

Community are the two communities discussed in this

study. Both communities are excellent in bringing the

social movement by consistently creating an event

every year and their ability to reach to masses. Also,

they have more than eight thousand followers on

Instagram.

Suara Disko Community is a disco music lover’s

community that plays Indonesian songs hits from the

80s, 90s, and 2000s. The originator of the Suara

Disko Community consists of eight people who share

the same vision of the desire to preserve the old music

of Indonesia. The primary target audience is

teenagers who think that Indonesian songs are not

worth to be played at a party or converted into disco

music.

Every event held by the Suara

Disko community is posted and shared on social

media. Ever since, there has been an increase in the

number of visitors at the next event. 500 people

attended volume 1, 450 people attended volume 2,

volume 3 was attended by 750, 1200 people attended

volume 4, volume 5 held in Sema Town was attended

by 600, and volume 6 held in the city of Bandung

attended by 1100, the number 7 volume was held in

Jogja were as many as 550 people attended and

volumes 8, held in Jakarta was attended by 2200

people.

Running Rage Community is one of the great

running communities since 2011. Running

Rage become an influencer for run sports lovers,

especially in Jakarta.

The purpose of this study is to investigate

the motive of the community to create an event, then

further see the stages of making it and also how the

community utilizes social media in building public

engagement and enthusiasm.

232

Soﬁan, F. and Agustin, C.

Boosting a Community Event on Social Media: Building Progressive Public Engagement and Enthusiasm for Change - Study on Social Movement Community in Jakarta.

DOI: 10.5220/0010005600002917

In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Social Sciences, Laws, Arts and Humanities (BINUS-JIC 2018), pages 232-237

ISBN: 978-989-758-515-9

2 LITERATURE REVIEW

The study about public engagement and organization-

public relationships through social media is done by

Men and Tsai. They conducted a web survey with a

random sample of 250 American Facebook users to

links perceived the corporate character, parasocial

interaction, and community identification, to public

social media engagement and organization-public

relationships. The results underscore the

effectiveness of a personification approach in social

media communication to construct an agreeable

corporate character for enhancing public engagement

and organization-public relationships. Not only about

how to build public engagement alone, storytelling is

increasingly prevalent in social media today also

helps to improve the brand image (Men, L. R., & Tsai,

2015). The study of Lund, Cohen and Scarles found

that social media users are conceptualised as

storytellers who co-create brands (Lund, N. F.,

Cohen, S. A., & Scarles, 2018).

In addition, Habibi, Laroche, and Richard develop

a model depicting how consumers' relationship with

the elements of a brand community based on social

media (i.e. brand, product, company, and other

consumers) influence brand trust. Three of the four

relationships positively influence brand trust.

Customer-other customers' relationships negatively

influence brand trust, which is counter-intuitive.

Engagement amplifies the strength of relationships

consumers have with the element of brand

community. Engagement has a moderating effect in

translating the effect of such relationships on brand

trust (Habibi, M. R., Laroche, M., & Richard, 2014).

Further, Aristeidou, Scanlon and Sharples

investigates the relationship between engagement

factors and behaviour patterns in an online

community that requires high levels of citizen

participation. Psychological engagement factors

described the engagement profiles. Extrinsic factors

attract/activate members, and intrinsic factors sustain

participation. The more personalised design is needed

depending on the type of community and members

(Aristeidou, M., Scanlon, E., & Sharples, 2017).

Smith and Gallicano argue that engagement is

conceptually distinct, and involves cognitive and

emotional immersion that may not characterize all

social media usage. They examine a social-media

user perspective of engagement using interviews and

focus groups. They find that engagement is an

informative, personal, present and social experience.

Millennials engage with organizations via social

media to facilitate social interactions. Engagement

may be as much a spontaneous activity as a

premeditated one (Smith, B. G., & Gallicano, 2015).

3 MATERIALS AND METHODS

The research adopts a descriptive qualitative

approach by using the semi-structured interview. The

subjects of the research are 3 informants of “Suara

Disko Community” consisting Daiva Prayudi

(Informant 1) as project leader of Events; Bobby Irfan

(Informant 2) as Public Relations; Fahmi Arifin

(Informant 3) as a loyal audience in the event of Suara

Disko and Public Relations of Oz Radio Jakarta.

Then, there are three informants of "Running

Rage". The first informant is Rizky Fahzan as

Running Rage board. He is a 23-year-old man who

loves running sports. Currently, he works as a

creative marketing editor in the Go-food division of

GO-JEK Indonesia. The second informant was

Reyhan Mahardika, a member of the Running Rage

Community. He is a student majoring in Public

Relations at one of the best private universities in

Jakarta. Then the third informant was Tertia

Ramadhani, a member of Running Rage. He works at

the largest e-commerce company in Asia, Zalora.

Interviews were audio recorded and transcribed

verbatim in the original languages. Data were

analyzed qualitatively by exploring the data, marking

the keywords and critical ideas stated in words. After

that, researchers arrange and give coding based on the

keywords, vital ideas and important concepts found.

The next step is sorting out and categorizing data

reduction. Then, the data interpreted which refer to

the concepts and followed by the interconnection

between parts that are drawn into more general

concept descriptively.

4 RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

4.1 The Motive of Creating Community

Event

Suara Disko is a social movement to popularize and

preserve party culture with Indonesian songs, ranging

from funk-boogie, pop, jazz, Disco classics to

remixes from a DJ; ranging from the 70s, 80s, 90s to

2000s. Suara Disko was first in the title of January

2015 in Jakarta and became the first party band in

Indonesia which was accompanied by dance music

full of Indonesian songs from beginning to end. The

birth of Suara Disko has a significant impact on

Boosting a Community Event on Social Media: Building Progressive Public Engagement and Enthusiasm for Change - Study on Social

Movement Community in Jakarta

233

electronic or dance scene in Jakarta. Therefore, it

formed a collection that plays 100% disco songs

Indonesia Diskoria Selekta. Another interesting thing

started was, many DJs also then started including

Indonesian songs between sets performance. Many

bands are now covering the Suara for Disko songs in

their playlists. Many venues are also playing

Indonesian songs in their playlists. Many young

people are now digging deeper into the ancient

Indonesian songs to fulfil their musical knowledge of

Indonesian music, until the making of another cloning

(similar event) from the Suara Disko. Now they have

also created a "greeting" aimed at the visitors of the

Suara Disko event, namely the "Keponakan Disko"

for the audience of Suara Disko events that always

sing and dance during these event.

Event Suara Disko aims to create a new paradigm

that Indonesian songs deserve to be played and

directed and enjoyed in a party. Community Suara

Disko is organizing event Suara Disko to persuade

today's young people and the general public to dance

with old Indonesian songs, especially songs that are

perfect to be played in the party, and are even better

than the dance music from abroad.

Meanwhile, the founder of Rage Running

community wanted to motivate positive thought to the

audience that, running is a sport full of fun and

freedom. Its only by running, that a lot of beautiful

things around can be seen and enjoyed because if use

a vehicle, things move faster. Also, the founder has

an idea to make the community run in Jakarta because

many people in Jakarta are busy and they usually are

lazy to do exercise. Therefore, the founder of this

community intends to generate a sporting lifestyle

that is by running. By running with the community,

will bring happiness to the people who join it. If done

regularly, running will be become a lifestyle. Also,

people can share and exchange ideas with others and

make the healthy soul that will generate positive

energy.

Why is the community named Running Rage?

"running" means running sports activity and "rage"

means anger. But the anger here is not really anger,

but means "passionately. The founders want anyone

who joins this community should have strong spirit

for running.

The Running Rage community was established in

2011. Running Rage has proliferated over the past

seven years. It has the membership of more than 300

people until now. Although the founder very rarely

leads the members when there is a running event, she

monitors through social media. Many people who are

not members of Running Rage but participated in the

run also documented and posted Rage Running

activities via social media.

The most certain thing in the formation of a

community is the ideological and purposeful

similarities of the people in it. However, it does not

mean the people involved in it have cultural equality.

Communities are not homogeneous entities; they are

made up of diverse groups with different histories,

social structures, values systems, and cultural

understandings of the world (McCloskey, D. J.,

McDonald, M. A., Cook, J., Heurtin-Roberts, S.,

Updegrove, S., Sampson, D., Gutter, S., & Eder,

2011). However, from these cultural differences, can

produce various values that can be collaborated to

become a view until the community can be formed.

4.2 Creating a Community Event

4.2.1 Research

The first thing to do to create the Suara Disko

community event, is to conduct research. Research

that aims to know the situation in the field and

determine the goals and target audience.

"Before we design the strategy we look for the

existing situation in the community so that we can

choose the target audience so that the execution will

be on the right path" (Informant 2)

4.2.2 Concept Design

After that, designing the event would require an

interesting idea so that the event has a clear concept

and can contain the message to be conveyed. At this

stage, the Suara Disko Community creates taglines

and determines the right talent to attract public

attention. Tagline and talent (performers) will

eventually be displayed on digital posters to

disseminate information through social media and

media partners.

Tagline becomes a short description of the theme

of the event and will be a hashtag in spreading digital

posters as well as images through social media. Then,

they determine a representative performer with the

theme of the event to be a guest star. Guest stars helps

to fill the event and can be a unique attraction that can

bring in the crowd.

4.2.3 Media Communication

Media used to communicate the about the event are

media partner, social media and word of mouth.

Media partners here are used as a weapon to attract

public interest that has not been known and has never

been, following a community pickle. Bobby Irfan as

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public relations the Suara Disko event calls it a

snowball effect. The distribution of information by

word of mouth to the public around is assisted by

other members of the Disko Suara community.

"More or less to convey information about this

movement, this movement Suara Disko, this

community, this event to the public to the media to my

friends around to the public" (Informant 2)

Similarly, the event planning stages performed by

the Running Rage community, although the Running

Rage community is a non-profit community. Running

Rage follow many events and get sponsors from

leading brands such as Uniqlo, Adidas and Nike. This

is because, reason that makes sense, the famous brand

wants to help develop young people who work. The

design of messages on social media that will get

deliverd every day is made with unique content so

that many people would want to join the community

Running Rage. How customer engagement in a firm’s

social media marketing platform might affect word-

of-mouth behavior. Consumer engagement in a brand

community not only increases the likelihood of

generating post-purchase reviews but also increases

the likelihood of posting positive online reviews (Wu,

J., Fan, S., & Zhao, 2018).

4.3 Evaluation

Evaluation of the event is done to also make it as a

correction material to be better again in the next

event. An internal discussion is conducted as an

evaluation effort after the event was held. To evaluate

the communication strategy that has been done

through social media, is by looking for followers and

likes from the social media. Evaluation is done not

only from the event and social media but the

evaluation is also done through the media partner who

discusses the event of Suara Disko. According to

Fahmi Arifin as a public relations of Oz Radio Jakarta

and an event organizer, the Suara Disko community

has been quite successful in implementing their

communication strategy but there are things that need

to be improved in order to make their communication

wider.

4.4 The Role of Social Media

4.4.1 Instagram

No social network in the world right now has more of

its users' attention than Instagram. When people are

there, they are 100% per cent there, looking at each

photo that passes by. In some ways, it's even got more

depth than Facebook, because there aren't all the

distractions like spotting ex-boyfriends. Instagram

isn't winning because it has more followers, it's

winning because people are there wholeheartedly to

consume the content (Vaynerchuck, 2016).

Social media used more emphasis on Instagram.

In addition to its rapid and widespread deployment,

Instagram is also considered the right media because

of its convenient features for sharing images and

video content as well as the ease of building public

engagement.

"Instagram is a media that you can make your

own content like cat, like dogs, like basketball,

politics, and share the information with world. As per

my understanding, it's effective in reaching out to

masses and it syncs with other available platform"

(Informant 1)

After having a lot of followers on Instagram, the

Suara Disko community often creates online

competition and quiz with prizes by uploading the

contested photos or quiz answers. As described by

informant 1, Daiva Prayudi as chairman of the event

Suara Disko.

"The form of participation can pass through like

we make the regular artwork competition which is

similar to the usual we make before the event so, it

engages with the participants and make external

contributions in the Suara Disko as well" (Informant

Through the naming of followers at Instagram, the

Suara Disko community also establishes a

relationship between the community and followers

and thus the followers or audience of the Suara Disko

community also feels part of the Suara Disko

community. Since the Suara Disko community

considers people who have followed the Instagram of

the Suara Disko to be part of a community, followers

also consider participating in community and

community missions Suara Disko names those people

with the name of “Keponakan Disko”.

The exposure of Bobby Irfan and Fahmi Arifin as

followers and audiences of the event giving the name

of the ‘keponakan disko’ can also be a strategy for

people who have not become followers of this

community in Instagram so that they also follow

because they want to be closer to the Suara Disko

community. The study of Men and Tsai also

underscores the effectiveness of a personification

approach in social media communication to construct

an agreeable corporate character for enhancing public

engagement and including intimate, interpersonal

interactions and community identification, which in

turn improves organization-public relationships

(Men, L. R., & Tsai, 2015).

Boosting a Community Event on Social Media: Building Progressive Public Engagement and Enthusiasm for Change - Study on Social

Movement Community in Jakarta

235

Running Rage also has a similar way to use

Instagram to attract public attention. The hallmark of

Running Rage community is black and white for

every post in Instagram.

"Because social media is easy to access wherever

and whenever, what else is off their gadgets so easy

to reach through social media and easy to access so

if there is notification, it can be directly opened. And

add another Well that's the uniqueness of our man

from the black and white of the uniforms at all Postan

on instagram, and indeed Running Rage prefer the

same instagram to deliver events and activities for the

people now right more often go to instagram. “(RF)

The proper design of the message should also be

considered in creating content for Instagram, so as to

attract the attention of audiences. It is a consideration

that engagement is an informative, personal, present

and social experience. Engagement may be as much

a spontaneous activity as a premeditated one. In

addition, millennials engage organizations via social

media to facilitate social interaction (Smith, B. G., &

Gallicano, 2015).

4.4.2 Youtube

Youtube used by public relations events Suara Disko

as after video. After video which shows the recent

event. This is done as one of the communication

strategies after the event so that the target audience

who have not come to see how the event Suara Disko,

become interested to come. After video on youtube is

also a medium to communicate the next event.

In fact, online videos are better at imparting brand

awareness than are traditional tv ads. A Millward

Brown study found that online viewing led to 82%

brand awareness and 77% product recall, compared

to just 54% brand awareness and 18% product recall

for similar television ads. Experts believe this is

because online viewers are more engaged the

television viewers; the web is a more interactive

medium than the passive viewing inherent with

television (Miller, 2008).

5 CONCLUSIONS

The motive for building a community is to make a

change in one's lifestyle. Suara Disko Community

who want to give new colors to Indonesian music at

the parties. The Running Rage community is trying to

give the public the view that running is a fun sport and

is not just tiring.

Stages of making the event are to conduct

research, to determine the field situation and

determine the target audience. The second stage is

designing the right concept for an event consisting of

tagline determination, talent and communication

strategy. The strategy in communicating the event is

by working with media partners, the use of social

media and word of mouth.

The use of social media provides a definite benefit

to the increase in the number of public who follow

community events. Instagram is the most widely used

social media because of its natural features in

building public engagement and enthusiasm

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This research was supported by Bina Nusantara

University. We thank our colleagues from the Faculty

of Humanities who provided insight and expertise

that greatly assisted the research. We would also like

to show our gratitude to all informants of The Suara

Disko Community and The Running Rage

Community for sharing their pearls of wisdom with

us during this research, and we thank our students

Calvin Abimael and Annisa Sa’adah for their so-

called insights. We are also immensely grateful to

reviewers for their comments on an earlier version of

the manuscript.

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