The development of technology is currently very advanced and developed, the development of technology has led to an era that we call the digital era. The digital era is an era where everything related to human life or society is connected to the internet. Digital and internet developments have given rise to a new media, namely social media. Social media is a place for people to display their daily activities or some even use social media to disseminate information.
This research aims to find out how social media is utilized by the community in a positive context, namely disseminating information for regional development, namely Pekanbaru City. The emergence of people who use social media in the context of regional development is certainly an unusual thing or in this study a phenomenon. Social media that has become an active and interactive communication medium is able to provide information related to problems in the community and is also able to become a medium for community aspirations.
The method in this research uses a phenomenological study approach using qualitative analysis. Qualitative research serves to be able to describe in detail the information obtained from informants, The information to be collected in this researcher is how traditional society changes towards digital society in the context of regional development, as well as looking for relationships between communities and the use of social media today. The informants in this study amounted to 5 (five) people, which informants are the people of Pekanbaru City who have Instagram accounts and have used their social media to disseminate information related to criticism or suggestions in Pekanbaru City facilities and infrastructure.
The results of this study show that there are certain factors that researchers have succeeded in obtaining, namely that the community has really understood the culture of digital society, the people of Pekanbaru City have also been able to use their social media to create content related to Pekanbaru City, the existence of communication factors and the development of self-capacity of social media users in Pekanbaru City is also an important point in utilizing social media as a medium for regional development.
Keywords: Phenomenology, Social Media, Communication, Regional Development