The University Public Relations Unit Communication Strategy in

Facing the 4.0

Mareta Maulidiyanti

, Pijar Suciati

and Sri Rahayu

1,2

Public Relations Studies, Vocational Education Program, Universitas Indonesia, Indonesia

Creative Advertising Studies, Vocational Education Program, Universitas Indonesia, Indonesia

Keywords: Public Relations, PR in 4.0 Era, Technology for Public Relations, Chatbot Dan Social Media Monitoring

Abstract: Public relation is a strategic function in the organization. The 4.0 technology era brings many changes in the

public relations job. Public Relations in University has a different character with other company. In the 4.0

era, public relations should adapt to new media which is user-generated content. This paper will explain the

improvements in industry 4.0 and its impact on public relations roles, especially for Public Relations at the

University. Technology in 4.0 brings some opportunities to Public Relations to expand and improve their

services to their public. As we know, Public relations have a responsibility o maintain corporate image and

reputation. They should know how to utilize new tools. Their knowledge about technology is fundamental in

this post-human era. The failure to cope with these challenges will result in a decrease of the university image

and reputation. This paper explores how public relations in Universitas Indonesia (both the University & the

faculty P.R. Officer/Head) can take benefit of the new tools. It will explain the requirements that make public

relations take benefit from. In order to achieve the research findings, a descriptive method used in this paper.

We explain the strategy of University P.R. and also its implementation in the faculties. The result is that P.R.

in Universitas Indonesia has already tried to adapt and deal with the 3.0 technology. The tries to utilize social

media monitoring and utilize Chabot to maintain the relationship with the public, maintain corporate image

and reputation. All those technologies will be function properly if we make a good workflow that serves the

public's needs. Finally, University PR practitioners should be aware of this and prepare to utilize all

technology to support their task every day and correctly. Form the discussion, and we can conclude that P.R.

practitioners in Universitas Indonesia have already tried to adapt to 4.0 era. Their effort can be seen from the

shifting in the communication platform used, and they evaluate it. The improvement should be made on

keyword management of Universitas Indonesia social media monitoring and chatbot.

1 INTRODUCTION

Public relations is a strategic communication process

that builds mutually beneficial relationships between

organizations and their publics (All About PR, 2018).

The definitions and shows that Public Relations is a

management function that is responsible for building

good relations and image with its public. In

communication, the key to creating an effective,

efficient and mutual understanding is the function of

public relations. Active means the results meet/match

the expectation while efficient means are achieving

goals with the minimal cost, time and personnel. The

Newcomb' ABX Model explained that a

communication process would run smoothly if both

parties have the same understanding of an object. If

the understanding is not the same or the opposite, then

the communication links between two sides will no

be harmonious and effective (Botan, 2006)

P.R. in University or higher education has a

different character with P.R. in other industries. The

is a uniques ways and challenges for university P.R.

professional although the fundamentals of public

relations at colleges and universities are similar to

those at other organizations and company. University

has a full range topic from many faculties, so it makes

P.R. should understand every of the faculty

perspective and contribution in the field of expertise.

Piers on Pijar Suciati 2017 said making time to meet

in advance and stay in touch regularly ensures

everyone is better prepared for breaking news

opportunities (Suciati et al., 2017).

In the previous study said that in Indonesia almost

all Public Relations officials from Public Relations in

Maulidiyanti, M., Suciati, P. and Rahayu, S.

The University Public Relations Unit Communication Strategy in Facing the 4.0.

DOI: 10.5220/0010028600002967

In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference of Vocational Higher Education (ICVHE 2019) - Empowering Human Capital Towards Sustainable 4.0 Industry, pages 33-38

ISBN: 978-989-758-530-2; ISSN: 2184-9870

State Universities complained about the not optimal

role and function as a manager of communication and

information to the public. The complaints also come

from the meetings held by the Public Relations

Association of Indonesia (Perhumas) and the

Government Public Relations Coordination Agency

(Bakohumas).

However. Today the world is welcoming the

period of sophisticated technology known as the

industrial era 4.0. Technology is projected to

dominate all human life's aspect. Revolution

technological concept and internet-based

communication will happen in this era. Human will

be able to communicate via the internet that allows

interaction and information exchange. Furthermore,

the information exchange not only between human

and humans, and humans to a machine but also

between machines themselves (Cooper and James,

2009)

Industry 4.0 has four main components that are

Cyber-physical systems (connections between the

real world and virtual world), Internet of Things

(IoT), Internet of Services (IoS) and Smart-factories

(Roblek et al., 2016). In the last several years behind

public relations need to improve into two ways

conversation in the social media, website and chatbot.

Social media does not feel personal to the

customer. So some public relations choose chatbots

to becomes an option to make customer engagement,

which one is a public relations role. The main

research question is "What strategy that University

public relations takes to face the 4.0 era?

2 LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Public Relations in University

As we know, P.R. refers to their work to the

institution's mission and vision. P.R. building plans

that connect the University's goals with the needs and

interests of the public (Suciati et al., 2017). Public

relations are connectors, and trusted partners, deep

listeners and strong advocates. They work and stand

for something, both at the decision-making side, and

they are also representing the University to the public

(Melichar and Brennan, 2017).

Some literature shows that university or higher

education public relations practitioners/officers do

not fully understand their roles (

Broom and Dozier,

1990

; Hale, 2001). Hale said there is a possibility of

why this condition result of role conflict or role

ambiguity with the emergence of higher

education/university marketing, branding and

advertising trends and strategies (Hale, 2001).

Experts in the field argue that public relations officers

will be able to achieve a "seat at the table" where they

can influence stakeholder relationships when they

perform both roles. Public relations should

implement the managerial role in such a way that top

management will understand their value and demand

it when making organizational decisions (Broom and

Dozier, 1990).

2.2 Revolution Technology

B. Revolution Technology to 4.0 Stage in Public

Relations

In public relations, we can divide this industrial

evolution into division according to industry 1.0 to

4.0 (Binsar et al., 2018)

a. In industry 1.0

In 1,0 era, public relations rely on the

mass production of newspaper lines. They

send their news release to the mass media

office such as television, radio, newspaper to

give the information (oneway). They also

make a campaign and distribute it to the

mass media. To achieve their goals in

serving the stakeholders. In the 1.0 era,

public relations implementing the one-way

communications or called as One to Many

communication. Public relations can reach

much attention from their campaign or news

releases through mass media.

b. In industry 2.0

Public relations in this era realize that

they cannot make a generic news release to

get public attention from all stakeholders.

They start to think that they have to reach the

customer in various ways. Start in this era,

public relations do a stakeholder mapping

and compose their writings in a specific

way. It is because every stakeholder needs

unique treatment and particular

communication from public relations.

c. In industry 3.0

When the 3.0 era was coming, public

relations facing the global change of the

information, stakeholder do not talk

anymore to the corporate or public relations,

they talk through the internet. People talk to

each other via the social media platform

such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.

Social media are being utilized on an ever-

increasing basis by corporations and other

organizations. Most of companies and

institutions are using social networking

sites. McCorkindale (2012) With social

ICVHE 2019 - The International Conference of Vocational Higher Education (ICVHE) “Empowering Human Capital Towards Sustainable

4.0 Industry”

networking sites, we can create a space to

interact with critical publics and to allow

them to engage each other on topics of

mutual interest. Public relations can post

organization profile frequently via some

applications that provide photos of the event,

video, and many other file categories to

engage the stakeholders into dialogue

communication.

Jo and Kim (2003) in Binsar (2018)

found that interactivity and multimedia-

oriented Web sites have a significant

positive effect on relationship building and

reputation, especially when that interactivity

is high. Public relations should pay attention

to the quality and credibility of information

even though online public relations will save

money and time because those two aspects

are the most critical aspect in regards to

relationship building (Jo and Kim, 2003)

d. In Industry 4.0

It is the era of using the Internet of

Things (IoT) and Internet of Service to

reach their stakeholders. The machine will

be able to show learning improves so the

machine can handle many tasks, including

public relations tasks. It impacts public

relations roles in many ways. Public

relations in University faces the new

generation that we called millennials. The

fast growth of social media makes word of

mouth (WOM) process no longer from

people mouth in the real world, but WOM

has happened in the internet world. Today,

PR in University is responsible for

developing interactive communication

channel emerged until providing the

counselling, making communication policy

decisions, evaluating program results, and

planning public relations programs (Toth et

al., 1998).

2.3 Public Relations & Communication

Strategy

Public Relations (P.R.) is always related to the effort

in creating public understanding through knowledge.

P.R. is a communication process that applies to all

types of organizations in both the commercial and

non-commercial, public sector (government) and

private sector (Jeffkins, 2003). Public relation is an

effort that is planned and sustainable for creating,

maintaining goodwill and mutual understanding

between an organization and its public.

Communication Strategy is a combination of a

communication plan and communication

management to achieve corporate image goals

Effendy, 2005). Communication program should

answer "Who Says What in What Channel To Whom

With What Effect?"

However, every type of company develops the

different contribution of communication management

strategy (Dolphin and Fan, 2000). Botan (2006)

called a company strategy as a "Grand Strategy"

while "Strategy" is positioned at the level of

execution /policy campaign.

3 LITERATURE REVIEW

This is descriptive research where the variable

indicator is the answers to the verbal or written

question. According to Neuman (2003), descriptive

research can give us a complete picture of the

situation, social phenomenon and a relationship. This

methodology provides us with a possibility to

examine only one variable or more (Ruslan, 2003)

A qualitative approach with the case study is used

in this research. Qualitative reaseacrh implement

based on natural condition to collect data from

informant without any introversion (Kasali, 2008).

The result of this qualitative research could be applied

to the similar situations and circumstances (Kountur,

2003). This reseacrh use case study strategy. Case

study needs an intensive research, use some data

sources and limited by time and research location.

The case could be an organization, group of people,

community, phenomenon, proces, issues and

campaign program (Irawan, 2007).

The primary data collection were conducted in

qualitative approach, which involved interview

methods with Universitas Indonesia Public

Relationss. We involve media relations officer,

protocol head and one of faculty P.R. member.

Whereas, the interview scope is all about how the

P.R. prepare for the 4.0 era, what kind of program

they learn to run to face this revolution industry.

A qualitative content analysis was chosen to

analyze the interview result through a text. Content

analysis is a technique that uses in compressing large

amounts of data from the interviews, field notes, and

various types of sources into systematic and fewer

categories of text which is based on specific rules of

coding (Maulidiyanti, 2016). Previous studies have

already shown that content analysis is a beneficial

method for the researcher to discover and describe the

focus of individual, group, institutional, or social

attention (Weber, 1990). This research placed a

content analysis as a crucial process which is

The University Public Relations Unit Communication Strategy in Facing the 4.0

categorizing some keywords from the given texts into

specific themes.

4 RESULT & CONCLUSION

There are two big U.I. P.R. activities in line with 4.0

characteristic. These findings come from an in-depth

interview with three interviewees that consist of 2

university's P.R. practitioners.

4.1 Chatbot on Website

Chatbot application has been implemented by one of

the faculties at U.I., Vocational Education Program

on its website (Picture 4.1). The Vocational

Education Program Public Relations provide chatbot

on their website to make two ways of communication

with their public.

Picture 4.1 Chatbot on Website

The chatbot can gather and answer the web visitor

question automatically. Today, the chatbot can

answer 5 question keyword such as study program at

the vocational program, Graduate student academic

title, tuition fee. Then, when visitor come back to visit

the website at the other time, the chatbot will

recognize and greet the visitor with mention his/her

name (Picture 4.2).

Picture 4.2 Greetings from chatbot

It makes the visitor feel special. When a web

visitor asks the question outside the list, the question

will be answered by the online admin (manually).

When the admin is offline, the question will send

automatically to the public relations email and will be

answered in 1 x 24 hours.

When the admin is offline, the question will send

automatically to the public relations email and will be

answered in 1 x 24 hours (Picture 4.3).

Picture 4.3 Email from Chatbot System

A chatbot is a computer program operated by an intelligent

conversation with the user. Chatbot communicates through

voice media or text in a short conversation. A chatbot is

designed to stimulate interactive conversation to a human.

The chatbot is a computer program, not a robot in physical

appearance (not like a human) so the dialogue is done by

typing some texts and chatbot will respond automatically.

The person who creates and develops a chatbot program is

called the master boot (Huang and Rust, 2018)

4.2 Social Media Monitoring &

Analytics

Social media monitoring is one of Public Relations

focuses on Universitas Indonesia to understand their

public. Public relations create a social media monthly

report that consist of (picture 4.4): total mention, total

sentiment for University, mention and sentiment for

each faculty/program in Universitas Indonesia, word

cloud of the month.

Picture 4.4. Social Media Monitoring Report View

ICVHE 2019 - The International Conference of Vocational Higher Education (ICVHE) “Empowering Human Capital Towards Sustainable

4.0 Industry”

Public relations division is hired a social media

consultant as a third party to do the social media

monitoring. Social media monitoring applied on

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube, the

social media performance becomes the Key

Performance Indicator for University's P.R. and also

for all faculties P.R.

Reffers to Sonar Platform model as one of social

media monitoring consultant in Indonesia said there

is 3 step of social media monitoring such as:

- Social Listening, Capturing Words

- Social Analytics, Analyzing Data &

Discovering Insight

- Social Intelligence, Actioning Insight

Picture 4.5 Social Media Monitoring Step

In Universitas Indonesia, Social Media

monitoring still focuses on social listening and

analytics, but Sonar Platform defines social media

listening as the process of listening to what customers

are saying on social media about you, your

competitors or about the problems you're trying to

solve in order to identify engagement opportunities.

In the other hand, Social media analytics is how you

bring the data together from your engagement and

listening activities to report on outcomes and tell a

story. To put it simply and more quantitative analysis

to measure the performance of your social media

(Roesli, 2019). This corresponds to the previous study

that said monitoring includes listening, interpreting,

and taking action on what people are saying or

otherwise conveying (Rappaport, 2010). In the

previous research, Rappaport (2010) said the

company should set the topics to be monitored that

suits to their products, management features and

brand image.

"Choosing a listening solution depends,

naturally, on its fit with organizational or brand

objectives for listening, the listening budget, and how

the listening responsibility is staffed". (Rappaport,

2010).

P.R. division in Indonesia faces the problem about

the data accurate that caused by the various number

of keywords that must be monitored. So, sometimes

there are keywords that are wrong or not included in

the monitoring system. It makes the monitoring result

will be not accurate. Another problem is related to

cost. The University has a maximum quota mention

from their consultant once the monthly quota is over

so they can not monitor for the next day.

Form the discussion above, and we can conclude

that P.R. practitioners in Universitas Indonesia have

already tried to adapt to 4.0 era. Their effort can be

seen from the shifting in the communication platform

used, and they actually do an evaluation of it. This is

consistent with what Anton Binsar (2018) said about

the character of Industry 4.0 where IoT becomes

popular and word of mouth (WOM) process no longer

from people mouth in real but happened on the

internet. Universitas Indonesia, Public relations unit,

have proven their efforts through achieving The Best

Social Media Management Award 2018 among

universities in Indonesia. However, they need to

improve the keywords method becomes more reliable,

so the monitoring result will be accurate. Before

implementing the social media monitoring, they can

try to search from general search engines, a particular

social medium such as Twitter Search, but also real-

time dashboard overviews of social media such as

provided by Addict-o-Matic (Zhang and Vos, 2014)

Likewise, with the chatbot, P.R. division in

Universitas Indonesia needs to make some

improvement on keyword variations and the chatbot

ability so the chatbot will be able to answer most of

the question form the customer. For the next several

years, it will be good if the chatbot can act as a

customer service that has a feature to building a warm

relationship and do a complaint handling. This

research suggests that if P.R. wants to use a chatbot,

they should design it very carefully. The excellent

conversation flow should be created based on the

university audience needs. They have to make answer

guidelines so the application will give the best

answer. The success of developing and maintaining

this chatbot will result in the right brand image and

reputation (Binsar et al., 2018).

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I would like to show our gratitude to, Pijar Suciati and

Sri Rahayu for sharing their knowledge during this

research process. The Vocational Education Program,

Universitas Indonesia, for allowing join this

conference and funding this research. Any errors and

imperfections in this research and paper are not

tarnishing the reputations of these esteemed persons

mentioned.

The University Public Relations Unit Communication Strategy in Facing the 4.0

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ICVHE 2019 - The International Conference of Vocational Higher Education (ICVHE) “Empowering Human Capital Towards Sustainable

4.0 Industry”