The Effects of Collective Challenge, Common Purpose, Social

Solidarity, and Sustained Interaction in Participation in the

411-212 Movements in Jakarta’s Governor Election

Nurindah W. Hastuti

, Eri R. Hidayat

, Bambang Wahyudi

, Istiani

Peace and Conflict Resolution Graduate Study Program, Indonesia Defense University, Indonesia

Psychology Department, Faculty of Humanities, Bina Nusantara University, Jakarta 11480, Indonesia

Keyword: Collective challenge, common purpose, social solidarity, sustained interaction, Governor election

Abstract: This study aims to analyze the effects of collective challenge, common purpose, social solidarity, and

sustained interaction on participation in the so called ‘411-212’ movements against the incumbent governor

of Jakarta, and to find the most dominant factor that moved people to join the movement. Preliminary study

at the grassroots level found many informants considered the movements as a way to defend their religion.

Through a quantitative method with additional qualitative data, data analysis was conducted with Partial Least

Square (PLS) with 245 samples from a religious institution that was involved in these movements. The result

showed that collective challenge and sustained interaction as having positive effects on the participation in

the movements, with the collective challenge as the most dominant factor producing R2= 0.959, and GOF=

0.7735. The implication of this study is that religious issue was not the single cause for participating in the

movements, but there are other factors such as dissatisfaction toward the local government’s policy. Further

study is recommended that take into consideration these factors, as well as expanding the location of the

research, as this has become a national movement.

1 INTRODUCTION

The 4 November and 2 December 2016 rallies

(commonly referred to as the ‘411- 212’ movement

respectively) attracted media attention due to the fact

that it involved a large number of participants and the

incumbent governor, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (BTP)

was accused of blasphemy against Islam (Astiana,

2016; Holmes, 2016; Ichwan, 2016). While, a social

movement could be influenced by the political

environment (Can, 2014), a social movement that

happened due to the opportunity created from a

political situation such as the ‘411-212’ movement, is

not always considered as a political movement

(Ichwan, 2016). This line of thinking was confirmed

through data from preliminary research, which

showed that participants claimed they joined the

rallies because they wanted to defend their religion.

From the behavioural science perspective,

Kornhauser (Can, 2014) found social movement

emerged due to the weakening social bond in families

and communities. Yet, the ‘411-212’ movement

contradicted this, because the bond amongst Muslim

communities who agreed with the aims of the

movement was in fact strengthened (Ichwan, 2016).

Tarrow (2011) put forward another theory on social

movement, which considered it as a movement based

on collective challenge, common purpose, social

solidarity and sustained interaction as the basic

principles. Considering the conflicting perspectives

on social movement, surely, it would be interesting to

study the factors that influenced the reason why

people participated in the ‘411-212’ movements. The

authors chose Tarrows’ theory of social movement

since the results of the preliminary research showed

the resemblance of the factors of the social movement

that he proposed, with the behaviours of the

participants in the movement.

2 LITERATURE REVIEW

della Porta and Diani (2006) found social

movement’s actors usually involved in collective

actions because previously they participated in

conflictual relationships with identified opponents, so

604

Hastuti, N., Hidayat, E., Wahyudi, B. and Istiani, .

The Effects of Collective Challenge, Common Purpose, Social Solidarity, and Sustained Interaction in Participation in the 411-212 Movements in Jakarta’s Governor Election.

DOI: 10.5220/0010058600002917

In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Social Sciences, Laws, Arts and Humanities (BINUS-JIC 2018), pages 604-608

ISBN: 978-989-758-515-9

that they became bonded in an informal network, and

in due course picked up a collective identity. Tarrow,

one of the first political scientists to recognize the

relevance of social movements as political actors

(della Porta, 1995), defined social movements as

"collective challenges, based on common purposes

and social solidarities, in sustained interaction with

elites, opponents, and authorities” (Tarrow, 2011).

Tarrow (2011) basically considered collective

challenge as an action by a group of people to

challenge an opponent group. Social movements use

collective challenge as the main supporting points,

attracting the opponent and third-party attention, and

creating a constituent for representing it (Can, 2014;

Sunoto, 1994; Tarrow, 2011; Willet, 2013).

Furthermore, collective challenge has often been

shown through the disruption over people activities

and on the governance level, it can be symbolized by

a slogan, dress code, or by giving a new name to an

object with a new symbol (Tarrow, 2011).

Common purpose is a goal that group members

wanted to achieve, which in turn provided a common

reason for people to join a movement, such as to

collect common claim against a perceived enemy, the

authority, or the elites (Tarrow, 2011). Even though,

organization or group with certain interest will

encourage people to join a movement, not all conflict

emerged because of group interest. Sometimes a

feeling of having common or overlapping interest

provided a reason for people to act and join it

(Gamson as cited in Baron, 2013). On the other hand,

people will not sacrifice their resources and take a risk

to become involved in a movement without a good

reason (Can, 2014; Tarrow, 2011; Willet, 2013).

Solidarity in social movement is an

acknowledgment of common interest which then

changes as a potential to act in a movement (Tarrow,

2011). One of the forms of social solidarity in a

community is the willingness of its member to help

other members whenever assistance is needed

(Durkheim as cited in Can, 2014). On the other hand,

group identity shows the willingness and

responsibility of the group members to encourage

people to participate in a social movement (Polletta

and Jasper, 2001).

Social interaction is a general process whereby

two or more people involved in meaningful contact,

resulting in modified behavior (Elredge and Merril as

cited in Muhammad, 2011). For a social interaction to

happen, two things must be present - communication

and social contact (Gillin and Gillin as cited in Baboe,

2016). Collective action will turn into a social

movement when a controversial issue is maintained,

hence the interaction between the movement

participants and the opponent must also be sustained

(Tarrow, 2011). While the interaction between the

parties involved could happen indirectly, say through

social media (Lim, 2005; Lim, 2017), direct

interaction is also needed to facilitate it (Matthiesen,

2012).

Based on Tarrow’s theory of social movement,

this study proposed the following hypotheses:

H1: Collective challenge has a positive effect on

participation in the ‘411-212’ movement in

Jakarta

H2: Social solidarity has a positive effect on

participation in the ‘411-212’ movement in

Jakarta

H3: Common purpose has a positive effect on

participation in the ‘411-212’ movement in

Jakarta

H4: Sustained interaction has a positive effect on

participation in the ‘411-212’ movement in

Jakarta

3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This study is based on a quantitative method with

additional qualitative data, and the quantitative data

were collected using a questionnaire which was

created from Tarrow’s social movement theory.

Participants were asked to indicate their agreements

for each of the items based on a five-point Likert-type

scale, ranging from 1 (“strongly disagree”) to 5

(“strongly agree”). The measure was grouped into the

four factors of Tarrow’s theory, which are collective

challenge, common purpose, social solidarity and

sustained interaction. Sample questions for each

dimension included, “I carry poster to show that I

support the issues that we are fighting for,” “I must

protest government authorities who do not act upon

the mistake of public officials,” ”As a religious

person, I should participate in acts that defend my

religion,” and “I join a social media group to follow

the issues related with my group.” Prior to the study,

reliability testing was assessed against 46 former

participants of the ‘411-212’ movement for each

social movement factor and items with low reliability

were deleted from the scale, leaving 57 items that can

be used for the study. Alpha Cronbach were as

follows: collective challenge (α = 0.79), common

purpose (α = 0.76), social solidarity (α = 0.68), and

sustained interaction (α = 0.72). Total Alpha score for

the entire scale was 0.89.

Using criterion random sampling technique, 300

participants (128 women and 117 men) who are

The Effects of Collective Challenge, Common Purpose, Social Solidarity, and Sustained Interaction in Participation in the 411-212

Movements in Jakarta’s Governor Election

605

members of an Islamic Majlis near Jakarta

participated in the study after giving informed

consent. The participants were selected randomly, as

long as met the sample criterion, which are

participation in the movements and is an adult. All of

the participants were able to read Indonesian at a

sufficient level to complete the written scale and were

between 12-18 and >55 years of age. On average,

participants had 15 years of education. Of the 300

questionnaires that were distributed, 269 was returned

(response rate of 89.67 %), and 245 were used for the

data analysis. An in-depth interview was conducted

to deepen the quantitative analysis results.

4 RESULT

Variance-based Structural Equation Modeling (SEM)

using Partial Least Square method was chosen for the

data. For this study, the SmartPLS 3 software was

used to analyze the data.

The initial model of this study assumed that

collective challenge, common purpose, social

solidarity, and sustained interaction would have

positive effects on the participation of the ‘411-212’

movements in Jakarta. The criteria of the Good of Fit

(GOF) index: 0.1 for small size effect, 0.25 for

medium size effect, and 0.36 for large size effect

(Wetzels, Odekerken-Schröder and van Oppen,

2009). Figure 1 showed the PLS result of the initial

model.

Figure 1: Initial structural model of social movement.

The hypotheses were tested by running a bootstrap

towards the initial model, with acceptance criteria of

T statistics significant at ≥ 1.96 and p < 0.05. The

result of the test could be seen on the Table 1.

Table 1: The result of hypotheses testing

From the table, it can be seen that there are two

constructs and two derivative constructs which are

significant. The first construct is collective challenge

(X1) with derivative constructs “the use of slogan”

(AS x12) and “dress code” (CB x13). The second

construct is sustained interaction (X4). Therefore,

only these constructs are included in the final

structural model.

After a further run on the PLS software, the final

structural model isemerging, and is being shown in

Figure 2.

Using the GOF global formula by Vinzi,

Tenenhaus, Chatelin and Lauro (2010), the GOF

value of the final model is 0.7735. This means that the

model is fit for big sized effect (≥ 0.36) and could

explain the 77.35% of the present variants. This result

shows that collective challenge and sustained

interaction has a positive effect on the people’s

participation in the 411-212 movements in Jakarta,

with collective challenge is found as the most

dominant factor.

5 DISCUSSION

The result of this study only supported two

hypotheses, which are the first and fourth hypotheses.

Therefore, different from what Tarrow (2011) has

found, for the ‘411-212’ movements in Jakarta,

collective challenge and sustained interaction are the

only two factors that have positive effect toward the

participation in the social movement of ‘411-212’.

For the supported hypotheses, there are two

explanations. First, the participants used ‘411-212’

movements as a form of collective challenge against

their common enemy (BTP). Second, while the

participants interacted one another within the group,

it was not often nor intensive. On the other hand,

interaction with the outer group was limited to daily

life interaction which didn’t bring the blasphemy

issue.There wasindeed interaction in cyberspace, but

only some activists conducted it intensively.

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The unsupported hypotheses, in the author's

opinion, happened because of conflation. Based on

the qualitative interviews, there is a possibility of

other issues than religion that act as influencing

factors. For example, one of the Islamic Majlis’s

representatives told one of the author that for such a

big movement, it was impossible for people not to

have their own agenda, so that while surely many

participants joined the movements to defend Islam, it

was possible for many parties to take advantage of the

movements to achieve their own goals (Personal

communication with informant on January 5th 2018).

According to Haught (1995), conflation emerges

when the identity of two or more things, individuals,

concepts, places or something with similar or same

characteristics, lost its differences, so that those

differences became blurred and seen as the same

thing. On the ‘411-212’ movements, conflation

happened when the participants experienced an

obscurity in putting a meaning to the movements.

They claimed the ‘411-212’ movements were a way

to defend their religion, but they also admitted that

they joined the movement because they are against

the election of BTP, whohad become their common

enemy because some of his policies were not

favorable to them.

The result of this study is reflected on the current

situation of the ‘411-212’ movements, in whichthe

participants who afterwards created an organization

called the ‘212’ alumni, were experiencing discord

among themselves due to differences in the aims and

goals of the movement, escpecially at the caretaker

level of the organization (Defianti, 2018; Fadhil,

2018; Maharani, 2018; Taher, 2018).

Figure 2: The final structural model.

6 CONCLUSIONS

Based on the discussion on the result of the study, it

can be concluded that, first, the theory of social

movements by Tarrow (2011) is supported partially,

in which only two factors had positive effects on the

‘411-212’ movements participation. These factors are

collective challenge and sustained interaction, with

collective challenge as the most dominant factor.

Second, there might be conflation among the ‘411-

212’ movement participants on the meaning of

participating in the movement, which was originally

thought as purely religious, but turned out might be

caused by dissatisfaction on social policies as well as

political issues. These facts are reflected in the current

situation, with a discord in the ‘212’ alumni, due to

the interests and goals differences.

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