BANDUNG, Telkom University – The lack of a success story and the potential of more than 5,300 villages in West Java is a concerning phenomenon. The dynamics of various activities, hard work, and achievements made by the villagers both in the socio-economic and environmental fields will be a source of inspiration and pride for all West Java residents. For this reason, the ability to build positive stories through storytelling techniques is one of the important things at this time. In this regard, the Village Patriots as communicators in various remote areas in West Java have a strategic role in building positive narratives through social media.
To enhance the Village Patriots’ capacity in creating good narratives, the Digital Public Relations Study Program collaborates with the Institutional Development & Community Participation Sector (KPPM), and the Village Community Empowerment Service (DPM-Desa) of West Java Province organized a training entitled “Utilizing Digital Storytelling for Village Patriot Public Relations in Building Village Image” on Wednesday (10/6). The online event was attended by nearly 200 of the 400 village patriots spread across 18 regencies/cities in West Java.
One of the objectives of the training, as stated by Hadi Purnama, M.Sc. The lecturer of the Digital PR Study Program as the chief executive of Community Service (PkM) activities, is to share knowledge, knowledge, and experience with Village Patriots. Especially related to the use of storytelling as a technique for delivering communication messages that are more touching, moving the mind, and of course memorable through various social media platforms.
On the same occasion, Lisa Avianty, M.K.M. The Head of Community Development and Participation Institutions (KPPM) DPM-Desa, in his speech, explained the history of the formation of the Patriot Desa program. Lisa underlined that Patriot Desa’s hard work often escapes the attention of many parties considering the lack of publication of various successes in implementing various programs in remote villages. The lack of communication of the work of the Village Patriots is caused by many factors, including the constraints of internet access, the lack of ability to manage social media as a public communication medium, to the limited ability to communicate with the storytelling approach. With all these obstacles, the stories of the hard work, activities, and achievements of the Village Patriots are not heard in the community.
Through training on the use of storytelling through social media for Village patriots who act as well as integrators, accelerators, and communicators, it is hoped that they will be able to leverage the ability to become storytellers for success in their respective villages. Then, the Village Patriots will pass on their ability in storytelling to the villagers, so that in the future residents will be able to tell the various activities, hard work, and achievements of their village through social media.
Also attending to fill the material at this training were the Digital PR Study Program lecturers, namely Choiria Anggraini, M.I.Kom who presented the material entitled “Implementing Storytelling in Public Relations Activities,” then Hadi Purnama, M.Sc. with the theme “Storytelling for Social Media,” and Muhammad Al Assad R., M.I.Kom which closed the training session with the theme “Digital Visual Storytelling.” (HPR – Tel-U)