Segmentation of the Public’s Information Needs in PT INKA (Persero)’s Digital Communication: A Study of Narratives on Locally Manufactured Trains
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.53639/ijssr.v7i3.425Keywords:
audience segmentation, digital communication, information needs, Instagram, institutional communicationAbstract
Institutional communication on social media addresses publics with unequal levels of knowledge and experience. This study analyzes differences in the information needs of technical and non-technical publics in INKA's digital communication on Instagram. The article applies a secondary thematic analysis to an in-depth interview corpus from the author's thesis research involving six purposively selected informants, consisting of three technical and three non-technical participants. The re-analysis focuses on sources of knowledge, evaluative orientations, information considered important, expected forms of evidence, and conditions that support trust. The findings show that technical publics prioritize information about production structures, local and imported components, domestic content, engineering processes, testing, technological collaboration, and system reliability. Non-technical publics prioritize information connected to use experience, including comfort, travel time, facilities, service consistency, maintenance, problem resolution, and follow-up to user feedback. However, the boundary between the two groups is not rigid because both demand transparency and verifiable evidence. The study proposes a layered information architecture for institutional digital communication consisting of an accessible shared layer, a technical-industrial layer, and an operational-user layer. This approach allows national-pride narratives to remain communicatively relevant while strengthening accuracy, relevance, and responsiveness to different audience needs. In a state-owned enterprise context, it places public information needs at the center of message design rather than treating them only as post-publication feedback.
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