1
Intercandidate Agenda-Setting and Social Media in
Indonesia
Suryo Prabandono
1
, and Eriyanto Eriyanto
2
1,2
Postgraduate Communication Management, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences,
Universitas Indonesia, Indonesia
eriyanto09@ui.ac.id
2
Abstract. This research aims to examine the Intercandidate Agenda-Setting in the
elections of DKI Jakarta province 2017 during the first and second round
campaign. The underlying theory of research is the agenda-setting theory and the
agenda building. This research is quantitative research with content analysis
method. The data collection is done by downloading the Tweets from Twitter
account @AhokDjarot (n = 1013) and @JktMajuBersama (n = 1613) during the
campaign period on both rounds. Tweets is divided into four month periods for the
entire campaign period, three month periods for the first round campaign period,
and four weeks period for the second round of campaigning. By using Spearman
and Rozelle-Campbell Baseline correlations, the results obtained show that
intercandidate agenda-setting relationships are found in the first round although
the correlation is not as strong as in the second round.
Keywords: Intercandidate, agenda-setting, social media, internet, election.
1. Introduction
The role of social media in political campaigns has become increasingly popular since Barack Obama
successfully used Facebook as one of the main communication media to campaign during the presidential election
in the United States in 2008 and proved by his victory he was elected President of the United States in 2008.
General election candidates and politicians also began using various other social media platforms outside of
Facebook, such as Twitter, Instagram, and Youtube.
In Indonesia, in the 2012 DKI Regional elections, according to Andriadi [1] social media has a very significant
role in building participatory communication and political branding of the Jokowi - Basuki pair, by seeing the
high traffic of conversations about Jokowi - Basuki in social media, especially Twitter and Facebook. [1]Andriadi
then added some interesting facts that social media is able to become a catalyst that amplifies the Jokowi - Basuki
campaign into various social pockets. Social media becomes a new public sphere for the public to discuss politics.
In addition, the marriage between offline activism and online supporters and volunteers of Jokowi - Basuki
representing actual participatory democracy.
With the election of Jokowi - Basuki as the Governor and Deputy Governor of DKI Jakarta in 2012, defeating
the incumbent, and bringing a new face to Jakarta, it is no exaggeration if there are many opinions that the social
media they use has a major impact on the success of election candidates. It can be concluded from a number of
explanations above that the use of social media has become a very important element in political campaigns,
especially at this time that the level of use is increasingly high and more and more forms of social media.
Furthermore, the 2017 DKI Regional elections is present amidst the high level of social media activities by
the community, of which 132 million internet users are in Indonesia, 40% of whom are social media users
(www.detik.com, 2017). Then the question arises as to how the campaign conditions for the 2017 DKI Jakarta
Regional Election are followed by three pairs of candidates amid the high internet usage and social media by the
SU-AFBE 2018, December 06, Jakarta, Indonesia
Copyright © 2019 EAI
DOI 10.4108/eai.6-12-2018.2286270