.png)
The 2019 Indonesian Presidential Election: Propaganda in Post-Truth Era
Abstract
Presidential elections often are colored by propaganda and post-truth politics in its campaign to influence public opinion. This study aimed to identify the way and forms of propaganda and post-truth communicate political messages from the 2019 presidential election in Indonesia through political communication on social media. This research employed a mixed-methods approach that combines quantitative and qualitative methods. The quantitative data were obtained from Twitter with social network analysis (SNA) from December 2018 to March 2019. Meanwhile, the qualitative data were obtained from literature searches and expert interviews. The results of this analysis indicated that presidential candidate Jokowi was widely rumored to be a liar, claimant of success, weak leader, communist, pro-China, and anti-Islam. There were also many rumors that referred to presidential candidate Prabowo as a pro caliphate, human rights violator, person with a questionable religion, bad-tempered person, inexperienced leader, and hoax spreader. These negative issues constitute propaganda in the form of stories, rumors, and myths that were manipulated to influence public opinion on social media. Some parts of society believed them based on emotional belief instead of on rationally observed facts. We conclude that even when it involves many people in a big nation, propaganda can be manipulated to influence public opinion.
Keywords: Propaganda, post-truth, social media, political communication, presidential election
ABSTRAK
Pemilihan presiden sering kali diwarnai oleh propaganda dan politik pasca-kebenaran dalam kampanyenya untuk memengaruhi opini publik. Kami mempelajari kasus pemilihan presiden di Indonesia tahun 2019. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengidentifikasi bagaimana bentuk-bentuk propaganda dan post-truth mengkomunikasikan pesan politik melalui komunikasi politik di media sosial. Penelitian ini menggunakan pendekatan metode campuran, yaitu kombinasi metode kuantitatif dan kualitatif. Data kuantitatif diperoleh dari media sosial Twitter dengan analisis jejaring sosial (SNA) dari Desember 2018 hingga Maret 2019. Data kualitatif diperoleh dari penelusuran literatur dan wawancara ahli. Hasil analisis menunjukkan bahwa capres Jokowi banyak diisukan sebagai pembohong, klaim keberhasilan, pemimpin lemah, komunis, pro-China, dan anti-Islam. Banyak rumor yang menyebut calon presiden Prabowo sebagai pro khilafah, pelanggar HAM, orang yang agamanya dipertanyakan, pemarah, pemimpin yang tidak berpengalaman, dan penyebar hoax. Implikasi dari penelitian ini adalah bahwa isu-isu negatif tersebut merupakan propaganda berupa cerita, rumor, dan mitos yang dimanipulasi untuk memengaruhi opini publik di media sosial. Sebagian masyarakat percaya bahwa propaganda ini sebagai kebenaran karena didasarkan pada keyakinan emosional, bukan fakta yang diamati secara rasional. Kami menyimpulkan bahwa meskipun melibatkan banyak orang di negara besar, propaganda dapat dimanipulasi untuk memengaruhi opini publik.
Kata Kunci: Propaganda, post-truth, media sosial, komunikasi politik, pemilihan presiden
Full Text:
PDFReferences
Arianto, B. (2019). Kontestasi Buzzer Politik dalam Mengawal APBD DKI Jakarta. Jurnal Polinter, 5(1), 55-76.
Arianto, I. D. (2019). analyzing Social Media Network for Students in Presidential Election 2019 with NODEXL. 2(2), 63-72.
Badawy, A., Ferrara, E., & Lerman, K. (2018). Analyzing the digital traces of political manipulation: The 2016 Russian interference Twitter campaign. Proceedings of the 2018 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining, ASONAM 2018, 258-265. https://doi.org/10.1109/ASONAM.2018.8508646
Baines, P. R., & O'Shaughnessy, N. J. (2014). Political Marketing and Propaganda: Uses, Abuses, Misuses. Journal of Political Marketing, 13(1-2), 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1080/15377857.2014.866018
Ball, J. (2018). Post-Truth: How Bullshit Conquered the World. Biteback-Publishing.
Barrera, O. D., Guriev, S. M., Henry, E., & Zhuravskaya, E.
(2017). Facts, Alternative Facts, and Fact Checking in Times of Post-Truth Politics. SSRN Electronic Journal, 646662. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3004631
Bekafigo, M. A., & McBride, A. (2013). Who Tweets About Politics?: Political Participation of Twitter Users During the 2011Gubernatorial Elections. Social Science Computer Review, 31(5), 625-643. https://doi.org/10.1177/0894439313490405
Bevins, V. (2017). In Indonesia, the 'fake news' that fueled a Cold War massacre is still potent five decades later. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/09/30/in-indonesia-the-fake-news-that-fueled-a-cold-war-massacre-is-still-potent-five-decades-later/
Black, J. (2001). Semantics and Ethics of Propaganda. Journal of Mass Media Ethics, 16(2), 121-137. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327728jmme1602&3_4
Boberg, S., Frischlich, L., Schatto-Eckrodt, T., Wintterlin, F., & Quandt, T. (2019). Between Overload and Indifference: Detection of Fake Accounts and Social Bots by Community Managers. In C. Grimme, M. Preuss, F. W. Takes, & A. Waldherr (Eds.), Disinformation in Open Online Media (pp. 16-32). Springer/ : Lecture Notes in Computer Science. https://doi.org/10.1163/18750230-02901006
Bode, L., Hanna, A., Yang, J., & Shah, D. V. (2015). Candidate Networks, Citizen Clusters, and Political Expression: Strategic Hashtag Use in the 2010 Midterms. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 659(1), 149-165. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002716214563923
Borondo, J., Morales, A. J., Losada, J. C., & Benito, R. M. (2012). Characterizing and modeling an electoral campaign in the context of Twitter: 2011 Spanish Presidential election as a case study. Chaos, 22(2). https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4729139
Bovet, A., & Makse, H. A. (2019). Influence of fake news in Twitter during the 2016 US presidential election. Nature Communications, 10(1), 1-14. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-07761-2
Boyd-Barrett, O. (2019). Fake news and 'RussiaGate' discourses: Propaganda in the post-truth era. Journalism, 20(1), 87-91. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884918806735
Caldarelli, G., De Nicola, R., Del Vigna, F., Petrocchi, M., & Saracco, F. (2019). The role of bot squads in the political propaganda on Twitter. Communications Physics, 3(1), 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1038/s42005-020-0340-4
Castells, M. (2013). Communication power (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press.
Chang, T. K., & Lin, F. (2014). From propaganda to public diplomacy: Assessing China's international practice and its image, 1950-2009. Public Relations Review, 40(3), 450-458. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2014.04.008
Coman, C. (2010). Modern media innovation in electoral campaigns. Revista de Cercetare Si Interventie Sociala, 31(1), 45-53.
Creswell, J. W., & Plano Clark, V. L. (2017). Designing and Conducting Mixed Methods Research (3rd ed.). Sage Publication.
D'Ancona, M. (2017). Post-truth: the new war on truth and how to fight back. Ebury.
Davis, E. (2017). Post-truth: why we have reached peak bullshit and what we can do about it. Little Brown.
Eriyanto. (2014). Analisis Jaringan Komunikasi. Kencana.
Fahmi, I. (2019a). Isu-isu Penting Terkait Jokowi. Drone Emprit Academic. https://www.slideshare.net/IsmailFahmi3/isu-penting-terkait-jokowi-jelang-pilpres
Fahmi, I. (2019b). Isu-isu Penting Terkait Prabowo. Drone Emprit Academic. https://www.slideshare.net/IsmailFahmi3/isu-penting-terkait-prabowo-jelang-pilpres
Farkas, J., & Neumayer, C. (2018). Disguised Propaganda from Digital to Social Media. In Second International Handbook of Internet Research (pp. 1-17). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1202-4_33-1
Goel, S. (2011). Cyberwarfare: Connecting the dots in cyber intelligence. Communications of the ACM, 54(8), 132-140. https://doi.org/10.1145/1978542.1978569
Grinberg, N., Joseph, K., Friedland, L., Swire-Thompson, B., & Lazer, D. (2019). Political science: Fake news on Twitter during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Science, 363(6425), 374-378. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aau2706
Irawanto, B. (2004). Film Propaganda: Ikonografi Kekuasaan. Jurnal Ilmu Sosial Dan Ilmu Politik, 8(1), 1-16.
Jungherr, A. (2016a). Twitter use in election campaigns: A systematic literature review. Journal of Information Technology and Politics, 13(1), 72-91. https://doi.org/10.1080/19331681.2015.1132401
Jungherr, A. (2016b). Twitter use in election campaigns: A systematic literature review. Journal of Information Technology and Politics, 13(1), 72-91. https://doi.org/10.1080/19331681.2015.1132401
Kempner, J. (2020). Post-Truth and the Production of Ignorance. Sociological Forum, 35(1), 234-240. https://doi.org/10.1111/socf.12576
Leber, A., & Abrahams, A. (2019). A Storm of Tweets: Social Media Manipulation during the Gulf Crisis. Review of Middle East Studies, 53(2), 241-258. https://doi.org/10.1017/rms.2019.45
Ma 'asan Mayrudin, Y., & Zulfiana, N. H. (2017). Construction of Ideological State Apparatus in the New Order Regime Against Communism in Indonesia. Journal of Indonesian Legal Studies JILS, 2(22), 113-122.
Mastel. (2019). Hasil Survey Wabah Hoax Nasional 2019. Website Masyarakat Telematika Indonesia, 35. https://mastel.id/hasil-survey-wabah-hoax-nasional-2019/
O'Shaughnessy, N. (2004). Persuasion, Myth and Propaganda. Journal of Political Marketing, 3(3), 87-103. https://doi.org/http://dx.doi.org/10.1300/J199v03n03_05
Quan-Haase, A. (2013). "Internet", Encyclopedia of Media and Communication. University of Toronto Press.
Renner, J., & Spencer, A. (2018). Trump, Brexit & "Post-Truth": How Post-Structuralist IR Theories can help us understand World Order in the 21st century. Zeitschrift Für Politikwissenschaft, 28(3), 315-321. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41358-018-0154-z
Stier, S., Bleier, A., Lietz, H., & Strohmaier, M. (2018). Election Campaigning on Social Media: Politicians, Audiences, and the Mediation of Political Communication on Facebook and Twitter. Political Communication, 35(1), 50-74. https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2017.1334728
Sudibyo, A. (2019). Jagat Digital: Pembebasan dan Penguasaan. Kepustakaan Populer Gramedia.
Thorson, K., & Wells, C. (2016). Curated Flows: A Framework for Mapping Media Exposure in the Digital Age. Communication Theory, 26(3), 309-328. https://doi.org/10.1111/comt.12087
Vaccari, C. (2017). Online Mobilization in Comparative Perspective: Digital Appeals and Political Engagement in Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom. Political Communication, 34(1), 69-88. https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2016.1201558
Ward, K. (2009). Non-violent extremists? Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia. Australian Journal of International Affairs, 63(2), 149-164. https://doi.org/10.1080/10357710902895103
Willcox, D. R. (2005). Propaganda, the Press and the Conflict. Routledge.
Wilson, I. (2018). Resisting Democracy: Front Pembela Islam and Indonesia's 2014 Elections. ISEAS Perspective, 32-40. www.iseas.edu.sg
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.31000/nyimak.v5i1.3882
Article Metrics
Abstract - 3414 PDF - 1559Refbacks
- There are currently no refbacks.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Nyimak : Journal of Communication
Communication Science Study Program, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Universitas Muhammadiyah Tangerang.
Jl.Mayjen Sutoyo No.2 Kota Tangerang, West Java. Provinsi Banten 15111 Indonesia.
nyimak_journal@umt.ac.id
journalnyimak@gmail.com
Nyimak: Journal of Communication already indexed by:
Nyimak: Journal of Communication is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.