The Effectiveness of Social Media as a Tool for Regional Election

Campaign in Indonesia

Endah Yuli Ekowati

Political Science Department, Universitas Airlangga, Surabaya, Indonesia

Keywords: Digital Media, Social Media, Political Campaign, Election.

Abstract: This paper focuses on the use of digital media as a tool for political campaigns in regional elections (Pilkada), as

it is written in Law No. 10 Year 2016 Article 65 Paragraph (1) that all the candidates for the elections are allowed

to campaign by announcing, broadcasting, and/or using printed mass media, electronic mass media, and/or other

media (internet, social media, telecommunication services). Digital media can make the campaigns more

effective. However, it is frequently misused by people who are irresponsible, and it will eventually lead to a black

campaign. This paper will identify the effectiveness and the problems which emerge from doing a campaign

through social media. Can digital media make the campaign more effective? Or will it only cause a black

campaign war which leads to negative propaganda in this digital era?

1 INTRODUCTION

The development of the internet and the use of

social media are seen as a good opportunity by some

political parties for doing their campaigns. Political

parties, political candidates or candidate pairs can

convey their messages to their voters by interacting

through social media. The development of internet

technology is increasingly utilised by the majority

of Indonesians who have social media accounts on

many different platforms such as Facebook,

Twitter, Instagram, Blog, and YouTube.

In Indonesia, internet users are continuously

increasing. The Ministry of Communication and

Information Technology (Kemen-Kominfo) in 2017

shows that internet users in Indonesia totalled 143.26

million or 54.68% of the total population of

Indonesia (which is 262 million people). The

numbers show an increase by 10.56 million in the

number of internet users as compared to the results

of the survey in 2016 (https://kominfo.go.id).

With the development of the number of internet

users which is in line with users of social media, the

numbers for which are continuously increasing. The

result of the survey conducted by the Indonesian

Internet Service Providers Association (APJII) in

2017 shows that at least 87.13% of the total number

of internet users are accessing social media services

in Indonesia. Furthermore, for some Indonesian

citizens, internet is also used in socio-political areas.

As much as 36.94% of the internet users used that

technology to read the political news. The

demography of internet users in Java is 57.70% or as

much as (APJII 2017).

The Indonesian General Elections Commission

(KPU) realises that social media cannot be

trivialised; therefore, the KPU has regulated the use

of social media as the medium of regional election

campaigns since 2015. Law No. 10 Year 2016 on

Regional Elections, states that all the candidates of

the elections are allowed to do a campaign by

announcing, broadcasting, and/or using printed mass

media, electronic mass media and/or other media. By

using other media, it means using telecommunication

services or internet technology to convey their

campaign promises.

If we looked back to Barrack Obama’s

nomination as the US president in 2018, his

successful teams used the internet, especially the use

of social media as a tool of political campaign.

Obama’s successful team’s sharpness in using social

media was also adopted by the contestants in the

presidential elections in Indonesia in 2014. Both

Prabowo Subianto and Joko Widodo have their own

followers on their own Facebook Fans-Page. The

followers on Prabowo’s Facebook account total

around 7,425,440 people while Jokowi’s Facebook

Fans-Page was liked by 3,311,213 people. The

timelines of both candidates were filled by photos of

their campaign activity, photos of their visions and

Ekowati, E.

The Effectiveness of Social Media as a Tool for Regional Election Campaign in Indonesia.

DOI: 10.5220/0008815700050009

In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Contemporary Social and Political Affairs (ICoCSPA 2018), pages 5-9

ISBN: 978-989-758-393-3

missions, and also photos of their programs. There is

also an interesting fact: Jokowi’s successful team

also put their advertisement banner on their

Facebook log-in page, so that users who wanted to

log-in to their account, would see Jokowi’s ad.

With the emergence of such digital public space,

it also opens the opportunity for the political parties

and politicians to use such digital media as a medium

for them to do their campaigns. The candidates for

regional head, campaign teams, or sympathisers will

be more seriously working on their campaign

materials on social media.

This paper will identify the effectiveness and the

problems which are generated from doing political

campaigns on social media. Can digital media make

political campaigns on social media more effective

in assuring the voters so that the regional head

candidates get the voters’ votes? Or will it just

become a vehicle for a black campaign which leads

to negative propaganda in this digital era.

2 CAMPAIGN AS FORM OF

POLITICAL EDUCATION

Campaign is conducted as the manifestation of

political education within society, which is conducted

in a responsible manner and also based on fair, open,

and dialogical principles. This is in line with the KPU

Law No. 4 Year 2017 Article 4. Whereas the

campaign itself in Law No. 19 Year 2016 is defined

as an activity to assure voters, by way of offering the

visions, missions, and programs of the political

candidates or the candidate pairs. Based on the two

definitions above, it can be seen that campaign is an

important point in election practice, for political

education is not simply explaining political visions

and missions to the candidate pairs in the elections.

However, a campaign should be an educational and

comprehensive medium for the citizens so that they

know their role and function in politics, in the life of

the people and of the nation.

The campaign practice in Indonesia is still very

closely related to the conventional model by way of

recruiting voters with so many kinds of attribute at a

limited gathering, meeting, through dialogue, public

debate/open debate among the candidate pairs,

spreading the campaign materials amongst the public,

setting-up props and putting-up ads in printed or

electronic media.

3 EFFECTIVE CAMPAIGN

THROUGH SOCIAL MEDIA

In Indonesia, campaigning on social media is not a

new thing. However, it is newly regulated since the

simultaneous local elections were held in 2015. The

KPU regulates the use of social media in the KPU

Law. Article 47 PKPU No.4 Year 2017 states “the

political parties or the political parties alliance, the

candidate pairs/campaign teams are obligatorily

required to register their official social media account

to the KPU in accordance with the level no later than

a day before the campaign is held”. Furthermore, the

materials and the durations of the campaign on social

media are also regulated i.e. it can be in the form of

texts, voice, pictures, or a combination of the three

whether it tends to be narrative, graphic, character,

interactive or not, and it should be acceptable for the

receiver’s devices of the messages and that the

official account must obligatorily be closed no later

than a day after the campaign period is over.

Social media is one of the common

communication tools for candidate pairs or

candidates during the campaign period to promote

their programs, visions and missions. Social media

enables the candidate pairs to directly reach their

voters, mobilise their supporters and influence their

voters. Campaigning through social media is also

considerably effective as a tool for exchanging ideas,

including the campaign materials which can be spread

very quickly. However, social media is significantly

ineffective for the impromptu mobilisation of a

campaign.

Social media is considerably effective in

conducting a campaign in this digital era.

Campaigning by using social media will be more

effective compared to using conventional campaign

props such as billboards or banners. Open-minded

citizens do not easily trust the contents of billboards

or banners; however, they will consider what their

friends or colleagues say on social media.

The candidate pairs, or the candidates who are

utilising the use of social media as the campaign

medium to connect themselves with the voters, need

to arrange a suitable strategy, as the information on

competing candidates can be very quickly and widely

spread to the audience. Even in the regional elections

in 2015, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle

(PDIP) specifically held communication and media

strategy training in collaboration with Friedrich

Naumann Stiftung (FNS), a German foundation

which focuses on improving democratic quality. This

event was followed by 19 regencies’/cities’

representatives who were conducting the regional

ICoCSPA 2018 - International Conference on Contemporary Social and Political Affairs

elections in 2015; apart from conducting strategy-

making and media-handling training, the concept of

crowd sourcing and crowd funding were also

explained and presented (http://www.enciety.co).

During the regional elections in Surabaya in 2015,

the two candidates had different campaigning styles.

If the successful teams of the candidate pair of

Rasiyo-Lucy Kurniasari tended to use a conventional

campaigning model, it was different from their

competitor candidate pair, Tri Rismaharini- Wisnu

Sakti Buana who utilised the internet as a medium for

their campaign. A crowd-sourcing campaign model,

which involved society in everything relating to the

campaign, was used to gather support.

During the regional elections in East Java in 2018,

every candidate pair competed to grab support from

the millennial generations. Sebastian Stier et al., in

the journal Election Campaigning on Social Media,

states that, in order to earn the supports from the

millennial generations, the successful teams should

carefully arrange strategies to do the campaign

through different social media platforms. This is

because each of the social media platforms has its

own distinct architecture and characteristics;

therefore, the topic being discussed on each social

media platform is different; it also need to be adjusted

to media which is being used.

The contribution of social media also determines

the success of the candidate pair in winning the

elections during the regional elections in East Java in

2018. According to the data collected by Kumparan,

Gus Ipul’s Instagram account named gusipul_id, has

19,425 followers. Since he was nominated as the

candidate pair for the East Java regional elections on

February 12, 2018, within a period of 1 month and 15

days, Gus Ipul posted 66 posts. Meanwhile, Khofifah,

through her Instagram account named khofifah.ip,

has 71,594 followers. Even though the followers of

Khofifah are greater in number compared with the

followers of Gus Ipul, there were only 28 posts posted

by Khofifah from her account in the same period.

From the data above, it can be seen that Gus Ipul is

more active than Khofifah.

The effectiveness of social media as a medium for

political campaigns is not only determined by the

massive number of active users. The characteristics of

social media in being able to reach various realms is

one of its important strengths. Social media is a

medium by which to communicate in which each

individual can influence one another, and can spread

the information in terms of how multi-level marketing

works.

3.1 Social Media has Multi-way

Interactions

The contribution of social media towards the

success of the candidates’ or candidate pairs’

campaigns, relies on how the social media enables

the candidates and candidate pairs to interact with

their would-be voters in a highly unlimited scale

and intensity. Social media gives the opportunity

for voters to have a two-way dialogue with

candidate pairs or the candidate. With social media,

even a multi-way dialogue between candidate and

voters, voters and candidate, or voters and voters

can be made.

The supports gained from social media also add

more chance of earning the vote in the elections.

The votes gained in the elections will increase if

there is involvement or active participation from the

voter candidates. That active participation should

not always be done on the social media account of

the political party itself or the social media account

of the candidate or the candidate pair, but this kind

of support can be done by way of spreading the

campaign materials obtained from the social media

account of the candidate with a personalised

message in order to generate talk on social media.

3.2 Social Media Is Not Instant

The well-informed and educated users of social media

are not easily influenced and not quick to trust new

information. In social media, it is only the factual

information which can be accepted. In assuring that

the information that we get is factual, a debate or

dialogue frequently occurs to generate mutual

understanding and conclusions. This kind of process

requires a long length of time.

The process of assuring society through social

media requires a long amount of time, working

slowly by discussing the visions, missions, ideas

and ideologies, for the users of social media are not

people who are easily persuaded to support

something, but they follow their own willingness

and awareness.

Social media will be very useful for politicians

who are intensely spreading ideas and discussing

particular topics or social issues happening in

society; those topics/issues are deeply discussed

over time. Such politicians will win during the

elections held.

3.3 Social Media as the Stabiliser

In line with the regulation, which regulates the

national elections or the regional elections,

The Effectiveness of Social Media as a Tool for Regional Election Campaign in Indonesia

campaigns can be conducted through printed media

and electronic media ads, and some of those methods

are facilitated by the KPU and some of them are

independently produced by self-funding.

The existence of social media can function as a

solution to minimise unfairness during a campaign ad

that is conducted through commercial media. Social

media becomes the stabiliser medium to the television

broadcasts which are no longer able to keep their

independence and fairness. Many of the TV channels

are now owned by businessmen/women who are now

starting to enter the politic realm. This kind of

condition has made the television media a

campaigning and socialising stage for the owners.

Here, the social media is urgently needed.

It can be seen that the participants in elections are

still updating their programs and their activities or are

still introducing new members to their social media

accounts after the period of the elections is over. This

is done to keep their constituents and to recruit some

new members/followers.

4 BLACK CAMPAIGNS ARE

COMMONLY OCCURRING ON

SOCIAL MEDIA

Social media is very flexible. It has a large space to

convey the content of the campaign, and this is

becoming one of the gaps which can be used by

competitor candidates. The bad effect of social media

is that it can be used as a medium to do a black

campaign by spreading fake or hoax news; therefore,

it can put the competitor candidates down in society.

As a matter of fact, there are many politicians who

have felt this bad effect of the cruel social media.

A black campaign can ruin democracy and

everything which has been built, and it will affect

society. The society will find it hard to choose the

right candidate pair in the elections due to the wrong

information that they have received

5 CONCLUSIONS

Considering the development of the internet in

Indonesia which is rapidly increasing and improving

across the whole country, it can be assumed that the

role of social media in the political fight will become

stronger. The phenomenon of doing a campaign

through social media which has occurred at the

national level has already been duplicated by political

elites at the regional level during regional elections.

The existence of social media as a medium for doing

campaigns will only be significantly effective for

politicians who are working through times, not

simply once in a five-year period.

According to the discussions above, there are so

many things which need to be done to utilise social

media as an effective medium for an effective

campaign and in order not to make social media

merely the medium for a black campaign. The

following are several things which need to be

considered:

 A clear and comprehensive legal framework to

regulate the practices of the campaign on social

media. Fraud and violation are likely to occur

when the regulations have many legal flaws.

The regulations relating to the actors, materials,

and the right time to do a campaign on social

media can anticipate bogus campaigns which

are done through any anonymous irresponsible

accounts.

 Supervision of the campaign content on social

media can be done by all of society, and if there

is some violation found, society is allowed to

inform the supervisory board of the elections.

 The General Elections Commissions (KPU)

and The Elections Supervisory Board of

Indonesia (Bawaslu) need to set up a

cooperation agreement with The Ministry of

Communication and Information Technology

(Kemkominfo) to supervise and to take action

on the practices of political campaigning on

social media.

 The infrastructure of internet technology which

is equally distributed from urban to remote

rural areas.

The existence of the law regulating the legal

assurance and the involvement and also the

corporation between the elections administrator and

the government, the mass and the youth organisation,

media, educational institutions, and religious

foundations make social media the medium for doing

political campaigns effectively.

The support of the technology and the

effectiveness of social media as a medium for doing

political campaigns are not able to stand alone. The

success in doing a campaign on social media will not

always and not automatically lead to success in

winning the elections. A campaign on social media

should be followed and supported by a conventional

campaign. That is to say, an intensive campaign on

social media should be followed and supported by

limited conferences, face-to-face meetings and

dialogue, public debate, spreading the campaign

ICoCSPA 2018 - International Conference on Contemporary Social and Political Affairs

materials and setting-up the campaign props. These

kinds of things are necessarily important even though

the rate of internet improvement in Indonesia is

getting better. However, there still remain remote

rural areas which are not reached by the internet and

there still remain tech-illiterate people in Indonesia.

The effectiveness of a campaign which is

conducted on social media can be felt by the urban

society which has already been supported by the

improvement of technology, but a campaign which is

conducted on social media might not be effective for

those who are living in a rural area.

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The Effectiveness of Social Media as a Tool for Regional Election Campaign in Indonesia