Chung Jia Ee (top) and Oon Jin Xuan (below) with the announcement of their wins at RCSC.
The initial plan of just participating in an academic conference turned out to be a victorious outing for two TAR UC students after the research papers they presented won the Best Paper Award and Best Presentation Award at the Regional Communication Student Colloquium 2022 (RCSC 2022). Oon Jin Xuan won the Best Paper Award for her research paper titled “The Impact of Sensational News towards Public Perception on the Malaysian News Industry”, while Chung Jia Ee’s paper titled “Analysis of Privacy Awareness Among Social Media Users in Malaysia”, earned her the Best Presentation Award.
RCSC 2022 was held on 20 October 2022 where the colloquium was about “Celebrating Novice Researchers” in fostering students to share their novel ideas and offer opportunities for them to present their research to the communication society. The theme for this year’s colloquium was on hybrid communication which attracted participants from Malaysia, Brunei, Cambodia, Timor-Leste, Indonesia, Laos, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
From the pool of research papers submitted by participants, only 12 finalists were selected for the final round. From the 12 finalists, Jin Xuan and Jia Ee, who are currently pursuing the Master of Arts in Communication, won the two awards respectively.
“The most challenging part is to write and proofread the entire paper within a short time frame. We were given around a month to submit the paper. It was a lot of work since I had to balance my time for my classes, assignments and my thesis. After I was informed that my research paper was accepted, it was also a challenge to decide what contents to present as each presenter was only given 10 minutes. It was a very demanding period for me to prepare well and I must say that the fundamentals I have gained in my diploma and degree at TAR UC have helped me a lot. In addition, my lecturers were very helpful in my preparation for this presentation,” Jin Xuan shared.
“The contents of my paper include most of the knowledge I have gained in my degree programme in Media Studies. In fact, the paper I presented in RCSC is my final year project for my degree programme. Although I already have the fundamentals for my presentation paper, I still found the presentation challenging as I was competing with participants from other countries. I have my lecturers to thank for their constant motivation and support which helped me to believe in myself and give my best for the presentation,” Jia Ee remarked.
