International Conference on Communication, Media, Technology and Design ICCMTD 09-11 May 2012 Istanbul - Turkey 388 SOCIAL MEDIA AS THE NEW WORD OF MOUTH STUDY ON INDONESIAN LARGEST INTERNET FORUM (KASKUS) Desi Dwi Prianti, M.Comn Asih Amaliah, S.Ikom Communication Department - Brawijaya University – Indonesia Abstract New media as the product of communication technologies has generated communication evolution in society. It changes the way people communicate with others. Indonesia’s Internet users have significantly increased for the last ten years. The majority of users use Internet as a medium of social interaction. It also goes along with the growing number of online community in cyberspace via Internet forum. Kaskus is the biggest Internet forum in Indonesia. The purpose of this research is to describe how communication technologies become a significant aspect in society development. It will explore Kaskus’ roles in influencing individual decision. Ethnography virtual was used on this research. This research found that social media works as the new form of the powerful word of mouth in society. It brings a new way of creating public opinion. It became individuals’ reference group in assessing themselves and shaping their attitudes towards particular topics or situation. Keywords: Internet forum, social media, word of mouth, virtual ethnography INTRODUCTION The rise of computer-mediated communication (CMC) has brought the world to the new era. It helps people to communicate with others freely with no distance boundaries. Since communication intertwined in every aspect of human life, how people communicate influences the way society is formed. Moreover, all communication technology extends the human senses of touching, smelling, tasting, and (especially) hearing and seeing. Such extensions allow an individual to reach out in space and time, and thus obtain information that would not otherwise be available. McLuhan (1965) put it as “the extension of man”. New media as the product of communication technologies generate communication evolution in society. It changes the way people communicate with others. In the past, there are two basic divisions of communication channel: interpersonal channel which involves all kind of face to face channels versus mass media channel which involves radio, television, newspaper and all kind of media that have capacity to distribute its message to mass audience. The rise of the Internet changes that distinction. Internet possesses revolutionary functions of communication channel. It has the power to integrate all levels of communication; interpersonal communication, group communication, public communication and mass communication into one media. Communication scholars labeled this Internet power as media convergence. Furthermore, in social world, interpersonal communication is believed to be more powerful to create more effective communication than other types of communication. “In fact, our beliefs, attitudes, and values are probably influenced more by interpersonal encounters than by the media or even by formal education” (Devito, 2007, p. 7). Interpersonal communication provides message exchange between communicator (message sender) and communicant (message receiver) in a more personal way than mass communication. Both communicator and communicant have the ability to supervise their communication act, which will increase communication effectively. Indeed, interpersonal communication serves as mediator for mass media to produce a great effect. People have known for years, that advertising is intended to influence consumer buyer decision. Therefore, people believe more in other people as the source of information than advertising as the source of information. Realizing that interpersonal communication is more powerful in influencing people, marketing field recognizes word of mouth as one of influential marketing strategy nowadays. Moven and Minor (1997, p. 180) defined word of mouth (WOM) as an ideas and opinion exchanges between two or more consumers about their consumption experience that is not a marketing source. Which is means it is unpaid and voluntarily. Since it is unpaid and voluntary it is considered as the most powerful marketing strategy. People tend to believe more in other people’s experience than to advertising since advertising is paid marketing communication and it was made intentionally by company to influence their target market. However, in this paper word of mouth does not always talk about individual’s experience in order to make a recommendation and evaluation about goods and service, but it also discusses both positive and negative individual’s experiences of goods, service, persons, events or a social phenomenon in order to influence others. It has always been a human nature, to communicate in order to influence others. Supporting this argument, rhetorical tradition views communication as the art of discourse. Therefore, they labeled people as a Rhetors (persuasive speaker) who always engage in the art of persuasion in their daily activity (Craig & Muller, 2007). In explaining about the art of persuasion, Aristotle argued that people use their logic to construct or defend their argument (367 BC/2007). Presenting evaluation by making comparison is one way to construct an argument. We can label a politician as a good candidate because we identify other politician as a poor / bad candidate. In conclusion, word of mouth is an interpersonal communication that contains evaluation intended to influence others’ opinion about ideas, individuals, events, goods and services. In computer-mediated communication (CMC), a new topic called captology has arisen. In his book, Persuasive Technologies, Bj Fogg (2003) refers captology as the study of computer as persuasive technologies and focuses on the ways in which computers can influence beliefs, attitudes and behaviors such as making political persuasion. For example, it is used in? Persuading others to vote for specific individual or to support or oppose particular political positions. A Discussion on political campaigns and social media that was held on George Washington University (2010) argued that political campaign nowadays uses social media as one of their campaign strategies. Whether it is to build an image, deliver messages or get a vote. With the emergence of web 2.0, new media possess the power of both interpersonal and mass communication. Not only facilitating communicator to distribute his message to mass audiences but also has the same power as interpersonal communication. Based on AON consulting research about how web 2.0 creating public opinion in employee communication (2009), social media messages spread rapidly and the feedback is nearly as fast, affecting and altering personal perceptions. With the increasing use of the Internet as a research and communications platform, social media have become an even more powerful and useful resource for transmitting messages in order to create public opinion. According to Internet world stat report (2010), an International website that features up to date world Internet Usage, Population Statistics, Travel Stats and Internet Market Research Data, for over 233 individual countries and world regions; Indonesia’s Internet users for the last ten years have been increasing significantly. This number goes along with the use of Internet as a medium of social interaction. People who use internet or later in this paper is referred as users, choose to interact in cyberspace using chatting facility, internet forum, mailing list, weblogs and also the most popular one, social networking site. In communication science, we labeled it as social media. Kaplan and Haenlein (2010, p. 60) define social media as "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of web 2.0 and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content.”