- 21/05/2019
- Categories: Commentaries, Press Release
Yogyakarta, 21st May 2019 – The presence of cyberspace provides a ‘new space’ for the community to interact and discuss various issues, including politics. During the 2019 Indonesian General Election period, various influencers or political figures appeared on social media platforms, coming from the two candidate pairs. As a study center that focuses on the development of digital society issues, Center for Digital Society (CfDS) also presented a popular research entitled ’10 Most Popular Political Figures during 2019 Election’, where the research findings were presented at a press conference on Tuesday, May 21st, just one day before the official announcement of the results of the 2019 Election.
Jokowi The Most Popular Political Figure During the 2019 Election, Kubu Influencer 02 Dominates
During the implementation of the 2019 General Election, CfDS crawled data on various social media accounts of influencers and political figures, especially on the Twitter. According to Iradat, a researcher at Digital Intelligence Lab CfDS, “Twitter was chosen because ‘political figures’ tweets’ are often to get covered in various media, both conventional media and online media.” There are in total of 109 Twitter accounts examined based on affiliation in the 2019 General Election. April 2019, which was also the month where the voting process begun, became the month when political leaders were actively engaged with their followers on Twitter.
By looking at the engagement rate (seen from the likes and retweets feature) from the Twitter accounts of 10 most popular political figures during the election period, CfDS divides the top 10 political figures into three camps, namely the camp of candidate pair 01 (represented by Jokowi), the camp of candidate pair 02 (represented by Fahri Hamzah, Fadli Zon, Haikal Hassan, Rocky Gerung, Cak Khum, Mustofa Nahrawardaya, Dahnil Anzar, and Sandiaga Uno), and neutral camp (represented by Mahfud MD). “Jokowi is listed as the political figure who has the highest engagement rate among other political figures. Jokowi’s popularity is supported by the fact that Jokowi has the most Twitter followers amongst other political figures, even surpassing the combined total of Twitter followers belonging to 9 other popular political figures”, said Iradat, CfDS Researcher. But on the other hand, in total, the camp of candidate pair 02’s strong influencers dominated the top ten most popular political figures. This shows the activeness and the high level of digital presence from the camp of candidate pair 02.
Social Media Strategy is the Key to Popularity
Talking about social media strategies, CfDS emphasizes the importance of uploading quality content and make it specified with the target audience. The strategy of ‘massively tweeting’ is deemed less effective in increasing engagement rates. Evidently, even though Cak Khum and Mustofa Nahrawardaya’s Twitter accounts ‘only’ have around 100,000 followers, their engagement rate is still high due to the number of retweets obtained. Iradat emphasized that the selection of diction is an important factor to attract the attention of the target audience. In addition, Iradat also revealed that the originality aspect of the political figure’s persona branding on social media is also one thing that influences the engagement rate of a political figure. CfDS’ findings show that the public prefers political figures who have originality and conformity between the persona branding that they build on social media and in the real world.
CfDS (Center for Digital Society) UGM is a multi-disciplinary research center that is established under the Faculty of Social & Political Sciences University of Gadjah Mada. This research center is built upon the concern over the contemporary dynamics of socio-political condition of the world that is accentuated by the impeccable influence of information technology. The phenomenon triggers the new patterns and complexities in the society, and thus requires new approaches in managing such complexities. Our research and other activities are based on spirits that is aligned with our motto, productive, innovative, & influential.
