Doc: FTI Untar – Fikhi Maulana
The chance to exchange knowledge and gain new insights is a valuable opportunity for students to expand their knowledge and international network. This can open the door to greater academic opportunities, including scholarships and cross-border research projects.
This was conveyed by the Dean of the Faculty of Information Technology (FTI) Untar Prof. Dr. Ir. Dyah Erny Herwindiati, M.Si. when giving a speech in a guest lecture on Friday (27/9/2024) in the Seminar Room, Building R 11th floor, Campus I Untar.
“The faculty is very open to international collaboration opportunities for lecturers and students, in order to strengthen academic networks and improve research quality,” she added.
Dean of FTI Untar when giving a speech // Doc: Untar PR – VH
This activity was organized by FTI Untar with the topic “Anger, Sadness, Fear or Disgust: Challenges of Emotional Distress and Misinformation on Social Media”. The guest lecturers were Prof. Dr. Budi Nurani Ruchjana from Padjadjaran University and Vivian Mantz, M.A. from University of Potsdam, Germany.
In her presentation, Budi emphasized the importance of enthusiasm and self-motivation in the academic world, especially in efforts to obtain funding or research grants. She encouraged lecturers and students not to be afraid of failure and to keep exploring.
“Don’t just think about money, but focus on the experience and networks built through research. These are priceless assets,” she said.
Budi also hoped that collaboration between universities, especially in research, can continue and provide broad benefits for all parties.
Budi in her session // Doc: Untar PR – VH
Meanwhile, Vivian explained her research that discussed emotional analysis based on tweets on the Twitter platform. This research involves three fields of science, namely cognitive computing, emotion theories, and natural language processing (NLP) related to sentiment analysis.
According to Ekman’s (1980) basic emotion theory, there are six main physiological emotions that humans can track and express, namely anger, fear, disgust, sadness, joy, and surprise. Vivian analyzed how these emotions are expressed through words in tweets on Twitter.
However, she also highlighted the challenge of recognizing emotions that are sometimes masked by forms of communication such as sarcasm.
“Language and communication are complex systems that describe emotions and provide clues about a person’s cognitive activity, opinions and approaches,” she explains.
Furthermore, Vivian emphasized that the act of communication on social media, both production and consumption, becomes an interchangeable and challenging emotional process for mental health. She also stated that more research is needed on mental health challenges in the online world, especially during crisis communication.
“Language and communication can be one of the most reliable sources to indicate cognitive activity and should be used as a consistent variable,” she concluded.
This guest lecture was attended by more than 100 participants consisting of leaders, lecturers, and students of FTI Untar. (KJ/YS/KJ)