Ezmieralda Melissa, Ph.D. joined the Department of Communication, Binus University in August 2022 as Associate Lecturer Specialist. Since 2008, she has been lecturing various Communication subjects, mainly in Strategic Communication and Media streams, in two Indonesian universities: President University and Swiss German University. Dr. Melissa’s research interests are strategic communication in public communication and the roles of information communication technologies in the empowerment of women and minority groups. In 2019, she obtained her doctoral dissertation from The University of Western Australia on political communication of the 2017 Jakarta’s gubernatorial election. Dr. Melissa is passionate about languages. Apart from teaching, she is a professional translator and interpreter for English and French. In her spare time, she enjoys hand lettering and spending times with her two sons.
Research & Publications
C. Sumartonjo, E. Melissa, F. A. Sofian, F. Handayani, M. D. Sari and V. Sylvina, “Constructing Gender: Analysis of Government Communication on Portal Lombok Timur Narrative,” 20th International Conference on Ubiquitous Information Management and Communication (IMCOM), Hanoi, Vietnam, 2026, pp. 1-8
Falak, S., Melissa, E., ur Rehman, F., and T. Zaman. (2025) ‘Bridging the divide: designing a multi-national, context-specific data science intervention for female youth in Asia.’ Borneo Journal of Social Sciences & Humanities, 7 (2).
M. A. Wijaya and E. Melissa, “Analyzing Tiktok’s AI and Heuristic Trust in Health Content for Young Parents,” 2025 International Conference on ICT for Smart Society (ICISS), Bandung, Indonesia, 2025, pp. 1-6
F. Catleyana and E. Melissa, “Era of the Girl: Postfeminist Identity Construction Through #Girlhood Trend on TikTok,” International Conference on Information Management and Technology (ICIMTech), Bandung, Jawa Barat, Indonesia, 2025, pp. 692-697
C. Haniifah and E. Melissa, “Social Media for Political Education: How X Account @BijakMemilih Engages Generation Z in Politics,” 2025 16th International Conference on E-Education, E-Business, E-Management and E-Learning (IC4e), Tokyo, Japan, 2025, pp. 328-332.
N. C. Tiovilda and E. Melissa, “Investigating the Technology Acceptance of QRIS Payment Among Indonesian Generation X,” 19th International Conference on Ubiquitous Information Management and Communication (IMCOM), Bangkok, Thailand, 2025, pp. 1-7
Falak, S., Mohamed Ossman, N. S. B., ur Rehman, F., Melissa, E., Banerjee Belur, S., and T. Zaman. ‘Girls in STEM: an exploratory study of students perceptions,’ 2023 IEEE 12th International Conference on Intelligent Data Acquisition and Advanced Computing Systems: Technology and Applications (IDAACS), Dortmund, Germany, 2023, pp. 1236-1240.
Melissa, E. ‘Media in contemporary Indonesian politics: the representation of Basuki Tjahaja Purnama in three Indonesian newspapers,’ ICA Regional Conference 2019, Bali, Indonesia, 2019, pp. 343 -371.
Melissa, E., Hamidati, A., Saraswati, M. S., and Flor, A. G. (2013) ‘The internet and Indonesian women entrepreneurs: examining the impact of social media on women empowerment’ pp.203-222 in A. Chib, J. May and R. Barrantes (Eds.) The Impact of Information Society Research in the Global South. Singapore: Springer.
Melissa, E., Hamidati, A., and Saraswati, M. S. (2013) ‘Social media empowerment: how social media help to boost women entrepreneurship in Indonesian urban areas.’ The Iafor Journal of Media, Communication & Film, 1(1), pp.77-90.
Melissa, E. (2012) ‘Dikotomi regulasi internet di Indonesia pasca reformasi’ pp. 225-240 in W. M. Adipura and M. Sulhan (Eds.) Media Baru: Studi Teoritis dan Telaah dari Perspektif Politik dan Sosiokultural. Yogyakarta: FISIPOL UGM.
Mei Hua, S. R. and Melissa, E. (2012) Investigating the Potential of Mobile Phones for E-governance in Indonesia. 7th Conference on Communication Policy Research South. Balaclava, Mauritius, CPR South, 5-7 September 2012.
Research fellow at The Advanced Centre for Sustainable Socio-Economic and Technological Development (ASSET), The University of Technology Sarawak (2021 – present)
Bina Nusantara University’s Project Initiative Grant – 2026
(USD 7,500)
SDGs in Motion Phase 3: Building a Contextual Gender Profiling Model for Policy and Program Design in East Lombok to Accelerate Progress on the SDGs . (Principal Investigator)
Bina Nusantara University’s Project Initiative Grant – 2025
(USD 7,000)
Project title: SDGs in Motion Phase 2 – Empowering Women through Participatory Design for Sustainable Community-Led Development. (Principal Investigator)
Bina Nusantara University’s Project Initiative Grant – 2024
(USD 5,700)
Project title: SDGs in Motion – Integrating Academic Excellence with Women Empowerment and Communities Transformation. (Principal Investigator)
ISIF Asia Grant – 2023/ 2025
(USD 85,000)
Project title: Scaling Up Myspeed.site: Tools for Measuring the Status of Internet Connectivity (Co-Investigator)
The Association of Indonesian Independent Journalists Grant – 2023
Grant to conduct research on issues related to information, literacy and community initiatives from the Alliance of Independent Journalists.
(USD 6,300)
Project title: Investigating the Spread of Hoaxes among Indonesian Women Religious Communities (Co-Investigator)
The Code of Science and Society Event Fund – 2022/ 2023
Grant to organise events that promote open-source data to social and economic lives of people through education, scientific research, and
technology development. (USD 16,000)
Project Title: Girls in Asia Data Training. (Principal Investigator)