President Jokowi and the 2014 Obor Rakyat controversy in Indonesia

Abstract

During the 2014 presidential election in Indonesia two diametrically opposed candidates appeared to abide by an informal set of rules whereby neither candidate challenged the other's integrity in public. Privately, however, campaign advisors devised ways to attack their opponents, primarily by using media contacts to spread rumors and allegations. As a result, the 2014 presidential race in the world's third largest democracy became in many ways the most negative and polarizing witnessed since the fall of Suharto's authoritarian regime in 1998. We argue that the Obor Rakyat media scandal, a major political event in 2014 that remains understudied, represents a new manifestation of rumor politics and smear campaigning that might also reveal some half-truths about President Jokowi, who is widely hailed as a novel reformist politician because of his relatively clean record and lack of direct association with the Indonesian political establishment. The Obor Rakyat reports contain serious allegations against Jokowi, and for the purposes of this article we will focus on the three most prominent allegations: (1) Jokowi is a bad Muslim, (2) he is a puppet president, and (3) he is in the pocket of Chinese financiers known as cukong.

The Practices of the Journalism Bias in the Mainstream Online Media in Covering the 2019 Presidential Election

“…However, many pieces of research have been conducted to prove that during general elections, mass media is not yet fully functional, as stated by Lilleker, and instead, it is used as a Jurnal Komunikasi Ikatan Sarjana Komunikasi Indonesia, Vol. 6 (1), 2021, 107-120 J U R N A L (Sani, 2014;Anuar, 2014) and political propaganda (Tyson & Purnomo, 2017) to win election contestations. In the context of Indonesia, this misuse of mass media is supported by the issues of the ownership of the mass media in Indonesia that is concentrated (Lim, 2011;Sudibyo & Patria, 2013a;Nugroho, Putri, & Laksmi, 2012a), which generate homogenous contents that set back a democratic process.…”

“…In addition to strengthening the thesis on the degradation of the role of mass media in Indonesia in supporting democracy in elections, this article also complements the discussion on Indonesia's internet and political issues. Internet and politics mainly focused on the roles of nonprofessional media in politics, such as the findings of politics in social media that mainly used to spread hatred (M. Lim, 2017;Hasfi, et al, 2017), political propaganda by the nonmainstream media (Tyson & Purnomo, 2017) and the sentimental analysis on social media (Haryanto et al, 2019). Online media is a professional media that ideally work with balanced journalism principles (Mcbride, 2014), which are fair, non-partisan, objective, and independent.…”

The Development of “Generaksi.org”, a Media and Politics Literacy Platform for Indonesia’s First-time Voter

“…Such phenomenon also occurred in 2014 when supporters of Prabowo Subianto -Hatta Rajasa ignited an opinion war on social media against supporters of rivals Joko Widodo -Jusuf Kalla. Tyson and Purnomo Claimed that "the 2014 presidential election was become the worst since the falling of Suharto's Regime in 1988 [2]. Consequently, many netizens had to deal with law enforcers because they uploaded political opinions that are considered illegal under Indonesia's Electronic Information and Transactions Law.…”

Reading Symbolic Identity Smear Campaign on Presidential Candidates Billboards in Indonesia’s Post-Truth Era: The 2019 Election

“…The survey conducted by Tyson and Purnomo, involving 1400 voters on Surakarta as well as in the Central Javanese districts of Boyolali, Karanganyar, Klaten, Sragen, Sukoharjo and Wonogiri for the length of time since June 13 until July 5, 2014 [4]. The results from the election in Central Java nearly 19.5 million votes with the choice 66.6 percent for Jokowi and 33.4 percent for Prabowo.…”