UNAIR NEWS – Public Health Student Association of Universitas Airlangga (UNAIR) held a national webinar and writing training titled Build Generation Z Creativity Through essay Writing on Sunday, May 22, 2022.
The event invited Ikram Putra, The Conversation Audience Development Manager. Ikram provided a presentation regarding the role of Generation Z in Popular Essay Development and Idea Contribution through Mass Media.
Generation Z development
Ikram explained that The Conversation is a media that aims to supply students, lecturers, researchers, and experts’ opinions about a certain issue. These opinions will be an article that is ready to read and digested by the public widely.
“So, our role actually is not only for generation Z, but also millennials and everyone. Thus, for generation Z who are not yet a lecturer or an expert, you can be involved and contributed by sending your ideas about what topics you wanted the readers to read on The Conversation,” he said.
Cultivating critical thinking
Furthermore, he provided tips about cultivating critical thinking habits in responding to community issues. According to him, what Gen Z must do is never stop being curious.
“The main thing is on the 5W + 1H concept. Remember, critical here means never to stop questioning. So, in every issue, phenomenon, or event there must be follow up question, keep asking,” Ikram explained.
To practice this, Ikram creatively invited the webinar participants to learn a case study by implementing the 5W + 1H concept about the latest issues. He gave three issues for the case study: Jokowi’s meeting with Elon Musk, Gofar Hilman’s sexual harassment, and Safa Space on Twitter.
“There are many perspectives and viewpoint you can use. So, don’t only focus on the center of the discourse. Try get more leads because there are many other potential,” he revealed.
Improving skills and ideas
Furthermore, Ikram stated some essential points that needed to be improved to train skills and ideas for article writing in mass media, such as:
- Read many books. Reading books is done to gain knowledge. For example, when we want to write about health, we must read books about health and read to find out which types of articles we prefer, who the writer is, how the writing style is, and then we imitate.
- Monitor the timeline. This is essential because writers must be up to date about the latest issues.
- Ask many questions by applying the 5W + 1H concept.
- Train many times because writing is a skill that contains theory and practice. Therefore, start training to write from simple things.
- Do not be afraid because everyone was a beginner writer once. Even the greatest writer must have been a beginner writer. However, the most important thing is to be brave and fight fears. (*)
Author: Rafli Noer Khairam
Editor: Binti Q. Masruroh
