Hashtag war: 2019 Presidential election rhetoric in Indonesia

Abstract

Twitter as a social media has become increasingly used, including by its use by each Presidential candidate's stronghold to launch a campaign to influence prospective voters' electoral decisions in the 2019 Presidential Election in Indonesia. One strategy used in such a campaign on Twitter was by disseminating hashtags that were expected to become trending topics on Twitter. The dissemination of these hashtags aimed to build political rhetoric that can influence prospective voters' electoral decisions. Thus, this study sought to explore the patterns of hashtags disseminated by each candidate's stronghold to build political rhetoric and find out public sentiments in the posted Twitter contents. The number of tweets with #Jokowi2Periode and #2019GantiPresiden hashtags during the period of the 2019 Indonesian presidential and vice-presidential debates that were successfully downloaded using MAXQDA 18.1.1 software was 92,276. The research findings revealed that the distribution pattern of the #Jokowi2Periode hashtag tended to be more scattered (decentralized) by relying on the actor's presentation and the actor's speed in responding to tweets. In contrast, the spread of the #2019GantiPresiden hashtag was more centralized by relying on communication channels on Twitter. These two distribution patterns are discussed with the perspective of cyber psychology, through cuesfiltered-in and cues-filtered-out theories.

Affective Polarization: Not Always Between Ingroup Vs Outgroup (Evidence from Twitter Conversation with Keywords Jokowi and PDIP)

“…When the excerpt of the video containing Megawati's statement about Jokowi went viral on the internet, reactions continued to emerge, both in favor and against. The phenomenon of pros and cons always occurs on Twitter, and previously, similar politicalrelated phenomena happened in Indonesia, such as the hashtag war between #2019gantipresiden (2019 change president) versus #jokowi2Periode (Jokowi for a second term), involving media and actors and dominantly containing negative content aimed at attacking opponents [2]. Or a study by Ali that demonstrated the occurrence of political polarization on social media.…”

Unraveling the Work-Related Distress Profiles of Election Officers in Yogyakarta: Lessons Learned from the 2019 General Election

“…While national elections are a routine event, its implementation is incidental. The heightened tension observed in various media outlets during the 2019 election notably intensified the political climate (Helmi et al, 2020). Such an uncertain and ambiguous context, where the election officials were gaining significant attention amid elevated political tension, can be perceived as a crisis context that influenced unforeseen alterations in job characteristics.…”