Many experts
believe, communication technology is a determinant of social life. How people
interact, form of social organization, to the history of human life, is
determined by the communication technology used. Recorded in the history of
human development, communication technology plays an important role in social
change. Everett M Rogers (1986) says, the invention of writing or the
technology of transcription has led the rapid development of printing
technology. Meanwhile, the discovery of telecommunications and computer
technology have a large impact on the advancement of interactive technology
(McQuail, 2005: 102).
In the view of
the theory of technological determinism, people live depends on the
communication technologies machines that are found. According to Harold Adam
Innis, economic historians of Toronto School, the main character of technological
determinism theory, states that each dominant communication technology used by
the community, have a bias in terms of its influence on the shape of society
itself (Mc Quail, 2005: 103). The theory of technological determinism
communication explains that the circuit of discovery and application of
communications technology has affected the social changes that took place in
society. While Wanda J. Orlikowski (2009) reveals the almost the similar theory
of "Socio Materiality". He said that humans and communication technologies
that have been fused, interact and affect one another. Humans discover and
develop communication technologies, and equip it with the features. When those
features are used, human activities changes. The changes need improvement and
development of new-technology weapons, and so on. Susan Greenfields, in Mind
Change, How Digital Technologies are Leaving Reviews Their Mark on Our Brains
says, the human brain is basically adapts to environmental technology that is
being used. This follows the logic of Darwinian thinking (Darwin's theory) that
living creatures evolve to adjust to the environment and technology has become influential
to the environment itself. Highly sophisticated digital technology does not make
the brain becomes lazy or does not work, but it raises the potential of
creativity and ingenuity that is hidden (Greenfields, 2015).
Over two
decades ago, Daniel Dakhidae in his dissertation at Cornell University United
States noted that the implications of technological innovation has affected the
expansion of media printing business that it becomes increasingly large and
requires a more professional management. Thanks to the use of computers and the
modern printing press, an intensification of journalistic work, which
encourages expansion or extension of a business in another field. The use of
new technology does not just raise the efficiency, but also led to the capital
transformation. Technology is not just a means, but also becomes heart of the
issue which change the shape of simple commodity production into a very advanced
form of production. The term is "to have more, to be more in order to be
more" (Dakhidae, 1991: 143). It has proven that technology has led the industrial
concentration into new industries (Dakhidae: 534). It means that the development
of the massive media conglomeration era in 1980-1990’s, did not escape the
effects of computer technology adoption in the media industry.
Long before
that, in the 15th century there have also been changes due to the tremendous
social invention of the printing press technology. Johannes Gutenberg, 1446,
invented the printing press in Meinz German press. The result could not be
underestimated. The power of Gutenberg
printing press duplication has capable of spreading and improving literacy
levels dramatically (Vivian 2008: 10). One hundred years after the invention of
the printing press, Europe experienced a revolution of enlightened thinking.
Books and newspapers emerged and spread. Even religions are being
"corrected". At first, there were limited number of Bible scripture.
In Catholicism, the Bible can only be read by its leaders. However, after the
printing press, the number increased rapidly. The access of Bible becomes more
open. Martin Luther from Germany spearheaded the protest and reform. Thus was
born a Protestant Christian. It means the major change in Europe at that time cannot
be denied because of the presence of new communication technologies.
Digital Technology Convergence
The same phenomenon occurs on the development of digital
communication technology today. The use of gadgets such as smartphones,
convergence of telecommunications, Internet and broadcasting, has influenced
social change of the face to face meeting intensity. There are many shifting
social interaction forms, from the concrete to be virtual through digital
communication technology. Nowadays people have become so easy to get connected,
technologically interconnected. There is no longer a limit on the distance
(space) and time. It has happened the phenomenon that is called "communication
revolution" that led to "social revolution". Activities in cyber
space, which was once considered to be "virtual" are just getting bigger
and become dominant. Current activity in the cyber space is no longer seen as a
virtual, but has become a part of real life. It has real consequences on life
of the physical world.
The phenomenon of technology convergence occurs when
computer technology, telecommunications, internet, broadcasting and print media
converge in digital unity, or defined by Pavlik and McIntosh, "the coming
together of computing, telecommunications, and media in a digital environment
is known as convergence "(Pavlik and McIntosh, 2004: 19). Digital
convergence also means the union of a service provider, the merging of the
receiver or device, and the merging of the network or providers of
telecommunications, broadcasting and the Internet.
Although the definition of convergent there has not been
agreed, but essentially, there is a transformation of the old form of
communication technology, to a new unified form, with the new implications too.
The convergence of communication technologies led to the transformation not
just in communications agency as well as creative or professional circles, but
also in industry, the public, even the government or the state. The changes
digital communications technology brings a new paradigm, social change,
including changes in the form of economic activity, industry business model,
until regulation.
Marshall
McLuhan (1989) once said, “technology is
the extention of human minds.” that means technology is an extension of the
human senses. Radio is an extension of our ears. Camera is the extention of
eyes. So I would argue, smartphone digital technology today is the extention of
our life, or the extension of our activities, a continuation of our life.
Almost all activities of super modern human life, live in fingers, the fingers,
on the smartphone. People "can not" be separated from their digital smartphone,
both for social activities, economic, political, cultural, recreational and
others.
In the end, the demand for change is inevitable for the
public, industry, and government, along with the development of digital
technology. However, it does not mean digital technology will remove the use of
conventional or traditional technologies. Media such as television, radio,
newspapers, and books and so on, will remain there, it will not disappear or
die. Only the function that changes. Like a candle unmatched by electric
lights. Or like a painting that match the photo technology. Or sending a
postmarked letters that is changed by email, SMS, BBM to WhatsApp. But the
conventional technology is not dead or swept away, only change its function
into a valuable art, the subject of the collection, and the romanticism media of
the past. I believe in the future, more and more technology or conventional
media will go the same boat with candles, paintings and stamps.
As the convergence of communications technologies already
widely used, it claims adjustment on these technologies to the demands of its
history or necessity. Including changes in regulation, business models,
institutional repositioning, the state policy, to human resources and community
preparedness. The point is the transformation of digital technology has led to
social changes and new business models in various sectors of life, which
creates the potential to cause a "clash" with conventional business
model, or the old one.
For the
world of communication technology-related industries, the implications of
digital convergence is not just about changing tools. But also stated that
"It means technology is not just a technology, It is transformed into
hyper capital with new business models". This means that for a large country
like Indonesia, with a fairly good economic situation now, when the internet
was present, kapitalispun wave clamoring to get to capitalize start-ups who
would dominate the world of Indonesia e-commerce (Yuswohadi, 2016). Similarly,
a global company based on digital applications 'invaded' the land market as
well, together with hyper strength of their capital, but accepted and widely in
demand. Community supports the benefit of digital communications technology,
which brings the efficiency, convenience, and improve the quality of life (Tim
Airlangga University, 2008: 8-9). Conceptually, the presence of digital
communication technology, led to the collaboration function between the forces
of global capitalism (which is behind the company-based applications), with the
wider community, to exploit the opportunities of technology application,
vis-à-vis with medium capitalism (local or national) that controls the conventional
business.
Shifting
Activities to the Virtual World
We are now living in a world of technology and its
influence we never imagined a decade earlier. Activities of social, economic,
cultural, and political, occurs not only in the physical world, but more and
more shifted to the cyber life. Almost every month, new application features
are always emerging, and its usage impacts the community activities. People
used to conduct communication activities, social activities, economic and
cultural presence in the physical world, now transformed significantly to the
cyber world or online. The net
generation’s time is increasingly spent on activities in the cyber world.
Not a few who goes online for up to ten hours a day. Cyber world turns into
the real world, "real life", which its portion becomes greater for
the net generation’s future. This
generation is referred as the digital natives (Prensky, 2001), the generation
who had been with digital technology from the beginning, culturally digital,
always want fast-paced, expressive, and being intelligent in technology usage.
Unlike the previous generation, the digital immigrants, who do not grow
together with digital technology, has been forced to know and follow the
development of digital technology after they are grown up, and also migrate to
digital culture.
As an example of the digital life in the
"sector" of education, Google has recently launched Google Scholar
features. With this feature you can access a variety of textbook subject in a
variety of publication formats. In the inside there are online journals and
scientific publications that makes it easier to find literatures. There are
also features of Microsoft Academic, search engine research references in
publication format. In this feature we can easily search for journals by
author, or affiliations where researchers belongs. There is also a Library
Genesis, the most complete provider site of digital books from all directions,
both exact and social, and everything we can access for free. Then there was
the social media that exchange the research result in academic circles,
especially students, the Academia. In this application every user is able to
chat each other to discuss and share research results.
In the presence of above sites and applications, is it still
relevant to build a physical library with a spacious building? The bookstores
and libraries could be more "quiet" later. If students still buy the
book from the bookstore, it was not because it suits their culture, but because
it required by the professor, who had already published the printing book. When
students comes to the library, it was not to solely find books but more simply
finding free wifi for searching
digital books in the virtual library as I mentioned. Or instead they just want
a date, chill, while having a sightseeing printed "textbook" museum.
Related to these developments, it has proven that digital communications
technology has created equal opportunities for everyone, wherever the user is
located, in accessing information or activities in cyberspace. In this case the
technology has given users an empowerment chance at the individual, that is
called the world is flat (Friedman,
2005).
The annual survey of Childwise
Research Institute in the United Kingdom noted that young people are now using
the Internet for an average of three hours a day. Video sharing site such as
YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook and Twitter is the most popular
destination of them (internet Health Team Report, 1/27/2016). Meanwhile,
according to Smartphone User Personas Report (SUPR) reports November 2015, the
Indonesian smartphone users spend an average of 2 hours 9 minutes per day for
online. The activity is dominated by chatting, accessing social networks,
applications, and Internet sites (SUPR, 2015).
There is a
significant change in the presence of digital communication technologies, not
only in behavior, but also a model of the industry. At first there were only
two kinds of frequency-based industries, the Telecommunications and
Broadcasting. At the early time, the use of frequencies was only for these two
activities. Then internet began to grow in the 1990’s and Internet Service
Provider came. Later in the 2000s emerged the latest informatics industry that
the level is above the previous three industries emerged, which is called over
the Top (OTT) Services.
Telecommunication
business is run by the National Telecommunications Service Provider (NSP). NSP
Company is a provider of telecommunications infrastructure and operator that
serves telephone services and short message service (SMS), such as Telkom,
Telkomsel, Indosat, Exelcomindo, and others. The second is the broadcasting
business forms. Broadcasting business uses special frequencies for radio and
television broadcast. Broadcasting is often also referred to specialized
telecommunications (Law No. 36 of 1999). Meanwhile, according to Law 32 of 2002
on Broadcasting, there are four kinds of broadcasters; the Institute for
Private Broadcasting, Public Broadcasting, Community Broadcasting Institution
and Institute for Subscribed Broadcasting. The third form of this business is
the Internet Service Provider (ISP), the company's internet service provider,
such as Speedy, Biznet, Im2, Indosat, and others. ISP is partially owned by the
company NSP. Then the fourth businesses form is called Over the Top (OTT)
services, content delivery service that is using a CDN (Content Distribution
Network) which allows the user to benefit the actual internet, which is not
provided NSP or ISP.
The existence
of Over the Top (OTT) application turns into digital characters life today.
However, its presence is often rated as a "threat". The
telecommunications company or NSP (National Service Provider), ISPs, media and
other companies whose business model is still conventional often feel
"disturbed" by the presence of OTT. OTT companies are often judged to
be a "parasite" that damage the old business model. The problemis
there has been no regulation to accommodate, whereas OTT is majority owned by global
company and comes from a foreign country.
There are several types of OTT we know based on the function
of usefulness. The first is Communications OTT, the companies whose primary
function is about online communication services application and Internet-based
real time for users. For example, WhatsApp, Line, Messenger, and other similar
services. The second one is Content Media OTT, enterprise applications to
access media content, either in the form of video, movies, music or other
digital content, such as YouTube, Netflix, Sound Cloud and other similar
applications. The third one is Commerce OTT, the company's applications for
e-commerce, online trading, or new businesses based online. For example, Pay
Pal, Trivago, Airbnb, Grab, Uber, Lazada, OLX, Go-Jek, and so on. E-commerce
OTT form can still be divided according to the user sector. The fourth is
social media OTT, business applications to socialize in cyberspace, such as
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Path, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Academia and others. The
fifth is Information Aggregator OTT, the company's application for service
information, databank or user guide information. For example Google Search,
Google Maps, Google Earth, Google Scholar, Mozilla Fire Fox, Yahoo Search,
Waze, Microsoft Academia and similar applications company.
The division of the five types of OTT above is debatable. It
can be added or subtracted according to the development. Because OTT
application is flexible, loose, the number and variety continued to grow
creatively, to different sectors, even the service characteristics are also
growing. The similarity is all types of OTT has an eager to have as much as
possible user. The user is the power, or sources of services, as well as
business big data to towing investors. Big data has become a new business
developed by global OTT, collected from the activities of OTT users.
Big Data and Transparency Era
Big data is the result of OTT smart engine observation of
the interactions and transactions performed by all users of Internet
applications. The more people are using or downloading the relevant
application, the more the big data is acquired and stored in their cloud. The
more active the user to interact and transact, the more rich big data
collected. Everyone that is connected to Internet applications is
"data". We are all data. Our behavior that is connected to the
Internet is the data. We are the interactions and transactions data. What we
produce and upload are the data of the internet too. There are data which are
made consciously, while others are made unconsciously. When we opened the
Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp or the other, it means we're transmitted data
location, mobility, and used gadgets, up to recorded behavior or lifestyle.
Digital communications technology allows all individual activities that are
connected to the Internet system, became big data qualitatively and
quantitatively, with the size of petabytes (exceeding terabytes, gigabytes and
megabytes).
Digital recording technology records purchase details, purchase
history, and payment, then sort based on demographics segmentation, activities
and transactions, to the coordinates where we move. Also the data of affiliate
network, the ability to buy, the market that is looking for, the preferred
behavior, to the selected channel and information. All of them are recorded and
collected as big data. Big Data also contains a collection of millions of news,
videos and photos, which continues to grow from the results of user generated
content on the internet. As a result, big data is the raw material to uncover
what is already happening, as well as more precisely and faster decision making
by political organizations, industry, educational institutions, banks, government,
until the public. Even the investigation or leaks data when signing in the
internet, also became part of big data.
With big data, many parties can search the track record or
reputation of a person. Even the news, or slander within the system of the
Internet, would be "permanently" become the part of big data. Of
course this can be used as a political communications, legal investigations, to
the interests of intelligence. Digital technologies that bring big data,
identical to the phenomenon of transparency. This means that in the era of
digital technology, everyone’s activity will be recorded as big data. This
phenomenon is then led to demands the importance of the right to be forgotten,
the right of a person to ask for clearing slander content or false information
on the Internet. This is one of the demands in the regulation of Personal Data
Protection Draft Bill. Unfortunately frequently there comes trouble on how the
state protect the personal data of its citizens if the presence of server, or
cloud computing to store the data is out of control, or outside the sovereignty
of the countries concerned.
In the era of digital communications technology, it is
inevitable that data has become source or vital force, which are then
capitalized. Capitalization of the data because of the data collected by OTT
like Google, Face Book, Twitter, and more than hundreds of millions, or even
billions of users around the world, is the strength of an outstanding business.
Big data can be used for basic promotional and micro targeting advertising that
has very specific audience, according the intended target, both in terms of
location, segment, until the right time based on historical data of Internet
users that are being targeted. Google, for example, now is "an advertising
company" in the world, with a product called Google AdSense. 2014 AdSense makes
$ 59 billion revenue or 826 trillion rupiah. By utilizing big data, Google
AdSense is able to perform micro targeting advertisement and e-promotion more
efficient and targeted. That work method are done not only by Google but also
Facebook and other OTT types. In 2014, Facebook that had been used by 1.32 billion
people in the world, launched Pages feature for personal promotion and
advertising of the account owner. The pages featured by messages, photos, which
will be dispersed to various desired account once it is boosted. The intended
target could be based on the region where the account owner lives, the owner
demographics, lifestyle, to the most specific such as who liked the culinary
posts, political posts, and others. All this can be done easily and cheaply,
just push the screen of their Facebook account and input credit card numbers,
then the ad will be dispersed as personal will of the installer. Suppose a candidate
of head region wants to post his thoughts to the voters in an area, he can use
the pages features on Facebook. This phenomenon is certainly a new challenge,
as well as "threatening" business model of the conventional mass
media advertising. Portions of conventional media advertising will be
encroached significantly. This is a serious problem, just like the case of Grab
and Uber taxi.
Data is not just for advertising, but also identical to the
user. The more users, the more data and vice versa. Therefore, many companies
aggressively seek OTT user in various ways, including subsidies and discounts.
With more and more users, the more comprehensive scope, the more data gained.
The quantity and quality of user and data will draw a crowd funding or investor.
Efforts to make money from investors is one of the goals of collecting users as
much as possible. Meanwhile, users will be more and more depends on the
creativity of applications offered. It means that intellectuality of
application founders makers will gain an appreciation with many users. So in
the era of digital communications technology phenomenon that occurs, it will be
a magnet for intellectual capital, sliding the previous phenomenon which the
capital that once became the magnet that attracts intellectuals.
So the big data featured by OTT technology will
significantly affect decision-making, promotion, advertising, until the
business model of communication. Martha Bennett from the University of Maryland
said "big data technologies are changing the world, everything from the
Internet of more things to gathering both qualitative and quantitative more of
data will lead to better decision making and inside" (Bennett, 2015).
. WikiLeaks phenomenon and Panama Papers which is recently
discussed is also a testament of the data power. Digital communication technology
makes the activities of data making, collection, search, until the leakage
becomes so easy. Anyone’s personal data can be stored and searched throughout
the Internet-based transactions. This means that the presence of digital
technology has created a culture of transparency. Human activity, as long as it
is connected to the Internet, will be recorded by itself, through feeding or
generated by other users. Communication that has happened in the past to the
present can be identified and used to influence the future. That is where the
nature of the communication is really continuous, irreversible, and cannot be
reversed. All become completely transparent. The problem is not all of the data
that came from user generated content is always based on facts. In digital
communication systems that are increasingly easy and allow everyone to
participate, also gave the rise to the phenomenon of anonymity. Many perpetrators
of political communication hide the identity, or become anonym to avoid
responsibility for the accuracy of information presented. Many people take
advantage of the freedom, so it is difficult to distinguish whether the
information is correct, and the results of counterfeit information are for propaganda
purposes (Subiakto, Ida, 2014: 25). In practice related to the rise of social
media, it is now known the existence of the buzzer accounts in Tweet land,
Facebook and online news media. The accounts are supported or financed for the
purpose of information and opinions war. Some of their duties are tweet-war, or
making the news on a particular site, and spreading it. They work together,
"orchestrating" the news, spread, and herding opinions. The
experience of making and manipulation of news media are stated by Ryan Holliday
(2012) in the book of "Trust Me I'm lying: An Confessions of a Media
Manipulator". Ryan admitted to having paid for manipulating information
and news in the United States. Together with his fake virtual friends that has
been made from online media. The ordered news items were uploaded and
distributed via social media by the buzzer that had been prepared, so the counterfeited
news goes viral on social media to influence public opinion. That phenomenon is
now coloring political communication in the country. Data are based on facts,
mixed with modified information, all of them became big data. There comes
Javanese saying "becik ketitik olo ketoro", which means the ugliness
could be so easily seen, as the big goodness will appears small.
The ease of producing social media content for everyone,
coupled by freedom, high rate of participation and the phenomenon of anonymity,
causing a high density of communication and split in opinion participation .
The freedom phenomenon tends to be wild in social media. Social media as a
public sphere filled with a variety of information, has much content of
attacking each other, either with data and facts, as well as rumors and gossip.
Those political leaders are often the object of attack communications. Daniel
Solove worrying about the future reputation in the era of Internet freedom now.
Reputation will be destroyed when the law is not able to effectively protect
personal privacy in the free Internet age (Solove 2007: 4). Now history has
changed along with the arrival of Internet-based digital technology. No matter
how great are the leaders in the free Internet age, their reputation would be
"crushed" by their enemies or haters. Either through the data, rumor
or gossip. Only the patient leader will be able to survive. Commons also have
to wait to see their leader’s reputation being "attacked" and
"destroyed" by some other people who hate it.
From this discussion, it can be noted that digital
communications technology has strengthened the principles of democracy, freedom
and transparency, but also become the problem for everyone’s reputation.
Countries with regulatory powers, capitalist domination and its technology
infrastructure, was also not able to perfectly control or direct the content.
Technical Connectivity and
Social Connectivity
Internet-based digital devices of
communications technology technically makes the possibility for users to get
connected with other smartphone users around the world. When technical
connectivity occurs, there comes also social connectivity. People are connected
socially because of gadgets they use. Previously, television technology led to
the concept of "global village" (Mc.Luhan, 1964). Now smartphone
technology led to the concept of "global brain". Global Brain, according
to Peter Russell is a worldwide community, which distributes intelligence
emerging internet. Further said, it is creating a collective consciousness that
is humanity's only hope of saving its self from itself (Russell, 2008). The
concept of global brain is similar to baby’s brain that grows into an adult
human. Number of baby’s brain cells grow more and more becoming billions in
numbers, and are increasingly savvy when those billions of brain cells is
connected each other’s. Just like the world population, when communications
technology is capable of connecting billions of inhabitants, the result is more
intelligent worldwide community. Having a humanist consciousness collectively
to save each other, help each other and share with each other is what called
Global Brain, the benefit from Internet technology.
Besides bringing the concept of
global brain, Digital communications technology also raises also the
concept of "Self-Mass Communication". Social media has been proven to
be able to spread the message of the communication to the massive crowd, but
not simultaneously, as happened in mass communication. By communicating using
social media, the message and information spread massively, through viral ways that
propagate from person to person, or from self to self. This form of
communication is called "Self-Mass Communication" (Castells, 2010).
With the technology of digital communications and social media, the world is
becoming increasingly connected. The issue in one region, could also be an
issue of other countries. Or it can be said that the more global the world, the
more national matters. The problems that occurs in another country, or
globally, appears to be national issues.
Back to the presence of digital communication technology
that have led to technical and social connectivity at the same time, it also
affects the economical connectivity. Economical connectivity phenomenon is
characterized by the sharing economy, and the economy caused by the connected
access elements of society into an economic cooperation because it has been
facilitated by OTT applications. The example of sharing economy is the
utilization of empty seats in a private vehicle (carpooling) to go to and from
work, the use of empty rooms to help guests who need lodging, also the
utilization of secondhand unused goods in one’s house for other communities who
need it more. OTT technologies bring together those who is in need, and those
who have it. Actually, this kind of sharing is not new anymore. Since the
previous time, people have a tendency to share with relatives, friends or other
people that is known as helping each other. OTT technology enlarges and
facilitates this phenomenon. For example Grab, Uber, Airbnb, OLX, Tokopedia,
Nebengers, the list goes on. The issue becomes complicated when it is not only
empty seats or vacant private room that is being shared, but is intentionally
provided as a business opportunity. Most of them deliberately provide new rooms
and seats in the new car seat for profit. There comes a new business based on connectivity
via OTT applications. This is actually no longer a form sharing economy for
resource efficiency, but according to Professor of the British economy, Giana
Eckhardt and Fleura Bardhi, it has become a form of access economy (Eckhardt
& Bardhi, 2015). If the access economy sustainability continued, it is not
necessarily as cheap as the beginning of the business launching. There is a
lack of transparency of surge pricing in determining this new business
concerning about insurance, taxes, employment and the rights of society. Not to
mention the subsidy or discount because there is another calculation behind, algorithm
and a business of big data (Katz, Vanessa, 2015).
Old business model run by the company in each sector in
national and even local level, such as taxi companies, hotels and lodging
companies, have to compete and deal with "anyone" both employers and
ordinary people who take advantage of the ease of this technology. The
conventional entrepreneurs and employees will be dealing with the people who
run the economic sharing, as well as who build new business models based on applications
(access economy). A note for this access economy model is, besides involving
community participation, part of it also involving global capitalists who own
and fund the International OTT. Then there was the complex conflict of
interest, conflicts of competition in various sectors of the economy.
What to Do?
On behalf of the national interest, the state has to make regulations
to regulate the OTT. The country together with relevant stakeholders should
prepare the wider community, using digital technology to increase productivity
and welfare interests of the state and other stakeholders. IT industry at
large, has responsibilities to narrow the digital divide in society. Due to the
use of digital communications technology gap will widen the economic gap
between residents. The speed of economic progress of those using digital
communications technology will be significantly different from those who do not
take advantage of digital technology, and even potentially leave the laggard.
All parties must adapt to the development of digital technology that has
followed social changes such as changes in communication patterns, business
models, the economic system of society, until the regulations that rules it
all.
Absolute
regulation must be applied despite the life change very rapidly. Regulation of
OTT has to be done, including the adaptation of regulation on affected sectors,
such as transportation, trading, hospitality, travel agencies, broadcast media,
and others. Each sector should anticipate changes and adjustments in the
regulation. The goal is that the use of digital communications technology truly
brings widespread benefits to society, but remain within the law. Application
of the technology that gave rise to new business models should not be allowed
to grow wild and liberal, unregulated, or bumping into an existing rule.
Regulatory and policy are geared to bring healthy and effective competition (to
foster effective competition). It also aimed to avoid market failure or simply
destroy the existing market, which is clearly supported so many people's
economic chain all these times. Regulation is also being used to protect consumer
interest, but still guarantee the developing and increasing access to
technology and services.
That is why
regulations and policies that are made has to be fair for all, or impartial and
set the creation of transparency or openness. Regulation was made
independently, not influenced by certain powers. Qualified to organize and
solve problems for the long term (consistency). The contents of the regulation
should able to be justified (accountability) and can be used or applied
effectively (effectiveness). Thus, the development of digital communication
technology that gave rise to social changes and new business models, brings no matter
as long as no regulations being violated, not opposed to or against the
regulations that is going to be made to ensure benefits for the community.
Efficiency and profit due to the acquisition of technology is a legitimate thing,
as long as they deemed ethical and not achieved by bringing destructive effects
for the local economy or the country.
The issue of
change because of communication technology because of the emergence of OTT and
new business models occurs not only in this country but also in other
countries. Some of them can be seen in these following bench marking. EU, for
example, are preparing the regulation of subject to license for OTT. So OTT
will not just come into a country in Europe freely. Some companies or NSP
telecommunications infrastructure in Europe are allowed to have a policy to
block online advertisements of OTT which passes through the infrastructure
owned by the Company. They require the division of profits between Global OTT
companies and infrastructure through which the OTT used to serve ads. So the
European countries will apply the principle of sharing profits, in order to
maintain and improve the quality of existing infrastructure. While in the
United States, they enforce the principle of "net neutrality", the
cost of renting the infrastructure for content providers are prohibited. It can
be said that those super power country are not putting much burden in
regulating the OTT. OTT companies that in fact come mainly from those countries,
were encouraged to freely evolve globally. But it should be reminded that in
those country the issue of infrastructure has been completed built decades ago,
and OTT considered as part of the evolution of technology. It is somewhat
different from other countries situation. In Germany and Spain, Google as a big
data-gathering machine is required to pay on any news published on the owner of
the news or content. It means that it is required for global OTT to share the
benefits of the data and the news they get from the German state. Canada
imposed a category of exempt broadcaster on Netflix, so that the OTT content can
be touched by regulation, as a special broadcasting. In China some OTTs are forbidden
to enter the country, but it pushing the national OTT to grow replacing Global
OTT. Suppose there is no Facebook in China, but they have Ren Ren. China has
banned but they got a Weibo. They also have a great OTT for e-commerce, for
example Alibaba that is already goes international. China also has Google's
competitor OTT called Baidu that has also been widely used in outside China,
including in Indonesia.
The move for
Indonesia is, besides setting up an appropriate regulatory, this country and
other stakeholders should also encourage and build National OTT, in order to
compete with global OTT. Countries should not be tired to facilitate national
OTT with incentives and ease, until they can compete. Global OTT could be
considered to be charged and taxed, so that the National OTT can develop
cheaper. Moreover, national governments and industry must continue to improve
human resources for creative developers. If it is necessary Indonesian human
resources in ICT centers abroad has to be withdrawn to strengthen the world of
digital technology which is a determinant of future success. But all of them
requires a change of mind set on all sides. Without mindset change that is
comply with the demands of business models based on digital technology.
The government also needs to encourage partnership between
the NSP, ISPs and Global OTT for building or maintenance of the infrastructure
and applications that exist in this country. Partnerships are directed also to
ensure that the company of NSP and the ISP can do income sharing, mutual help
in the implementation of micro-targeting advertising. We do not need a policy
to block online advertisements in the OTT just like European policy, it is
better to develop mutual beneficial synergies or cooperation, including
branding by NSP and ISP on OTT services they have facilitated.
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