- 29/09/2023
- Category: Press Release
Yogyakarta (09/27/2023) – In this digital era, the general public has widely adopted social media platforms (including X) as the primary channels for sharing political views, election-related information, and debates about the candidates competing in the 2024 General Election (Pemilu). Center for Digital Society (CfDS) UGM participated in the fervent discussions leading up to this democratic event through a press conference with the theme “Tren Bacapres pada Platform X: Perang Opini, Cyber Troop, hingga Cawe-cawe Jokowi” held at the Digital Intelligence Lab (DIL) of the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences (FISIPOL) UGM on Wednesday (09/27). The event featured Agung Tri Nugraha, the Research Manager of CfDS UGM, who responded to the latest trends influencing online discussions and support for political figures in Indonesia.
To gain comprehensive insights, CfDS collected data from the social media platform X during the months of July and August in 2023. This data included various tweets, comments, and interactions related to the presidential election and current political issues. Agung stated, “We collected a total of 59,155 posts using several keywords related to the 2024 Election, Presidential Candidates (Capres), and Political Parties. After removing duplicate posts, we were left with 50,503 posts.”
Through the acquired data, CfDS identified indications of ‘cyber troop’ movements involving all the monitored bacapres in this study. This reflects the similarities among the three bacapres who paid attention to social media campaigns. These findings also reinforce research released by the Oxford Internet Institute in 2019 titled “Global Inventory of Organised Social Media Manipulation” and research conducted by Sastramidjaja and Wijayanto in 2022 on “Cyber Troops, Online Manipulation of Public Opinion, and Co-Optation of Indonesia’s Cybersphere.”
Furthermore, there was a significant negative sentiment towards President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) in online conversations. Agung revealed, “In the analysis of negative sentiment posts, the word ‘Jokowi’ appeared dominantly. Further analysis of the term ‘Jokowi’ revealed the top 10 trigrams, dominated by ‘cawe-cawe jokowi,’ ‘cawe-cawe capres,’ ‘capres didukung jokowi,’ and ‘jokowi dukung ganjar.'”
Still related to X netizens’ interactions regarding political figures in Indonesia, the bacapres competing in the run-up to the 2024 Election did not escape attention. Based on their study, Prabowo Subianto emerged as the most frequently mentioned bacapres from Gerindra, without being tagged or mentioned directly, in X users’ tweets and comments. “After a deeper examination, posts related to Prabowo that were duplicated were posted by a single account a total of 101 times. This pattern differs from duplicated positive sentiment posts, which were duplicated by an average of more than five accounts,” Agung added.
Meanwhile, Ganjar Pranowo, the bacapres from PDIP, received the highest mentions and replies in social network analysis, followed by Anies. “Ganjar became the most mentioned and replied bacapres. As for posts related to Ganjar, they were dominated by keywords and hashtags like ‘ganjarcapres,’ which were posted by five accounts. In contrast, negative sentiment posts involved more than seven accounts per post, unlike Prabowo,” Agung explained.
Not falling behind other bacapres, the Anies Baswedan audience cluster was believed to have the highest level of interaction in X social media posts and comments compared to other bacapres’ audience clusters. Agung elaborated, “Through primary social network analysis, especially top modularity classes, the Anies audience cluster dominated by accounts such as @aniesbaswedan, @pdemokrat, and @bachrumachmadi, created a cluster with the most active interactions at 12.28%.”
Based on these findings, CfDS believes that social media, especially X, will play a key role in the 2024 Election. The research center also recommends enhancing digital literacy, active monitoring, and effective communication for political stakeholders. “This research is expected to provide deeper insights into the dynamics of politics in the digital era and encourage healthy and constructive discussions in the lead-up to the 2024 Election in Indonesia,” concluded Agung.
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The Center for Digital Society (CfDS) is a research center located in the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences at Gadjah Mada University. CfDS focuses on the study of digital society, including digital businesses and lifestyles. Through various research and public discussion events, CfDS provides educational resources to the public regarding the impact of technology in various aspects of life.
