Download Interactive Marketing in Indonesian Political Race

Interactive Political Communication and the rise of social media in Indonesia
Dina Septiani, M.Comn
Clemson University – SC, USA
IGAK Satrya Wibawa, MCA
Universitas Airlangga – Surabaya, Indonesia
This essay addresses changes in political marketing, in relation to the rise of social media in
Indonesia. Arguably, the changes in conventional political marketing are much influenced by the new
forms of framing, such as tranversality. This notion arose after political marketers became caught up
between old and the new forms of media, especially with the rise of web 2.0. The internet is being
used as an interface and is shifting the practice of political marketing communication.
As it has been proposed by previous scholars, interactivity in political communication is a response
to new forms of framing, transversality, and shifts in media more generally (Lyons, D., (2008); Fill, C.,
(2009); Van Santen R and Van Zoonen L (2010); Koesters, T., (2012); Morris, J. (2012); Ahmad, N.
(2013); Enli, Sara Gunn; Skogerbø, Eli (2013); Kruikemeier, Noort, Vliegenthart, Vreese (2013)). With
many technological applications, new interfaces such as social media have created various kind of
political discourse. In addition to previous scholar’s discussion in political communication, one need
to take a step back to discuss what is political culture. Vázquez Semadeni1 defines political culture as
"the set of discourses and symbolic practices by means of which both individuals and groups
articulate their relationship to power, elaborate their political demands and put them at stake.”
Political culture involves set of discourse and many symbolic practice, and new media arguably
becomes the medium to articulate that relationship with power.
Transversality occurs when actors become caught between old and new forms of media, and will
continue to occur as new media technologies emerge. Transversality becomes unavoidable when
1
[Vázquez Semadeni, M. E. (2010). La formación de una cultura política republicana: El debate público sobre la
masonería. México, 1821-1830. Serie Historia Moderna y Contemporánea/Instituto de Investigaciones
Históricas; núm. 54. México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México/El Colegio de Michoacán. ISBN 978607-02-1694-7]
working with new media technologies. Genosko2 uses the question of transversality in order to
understand the dynamics of institutions. One of the tranversality forms is the internet, as a platform,
the internet offers an opportunity for politician to profile themselves. The Internet not only enables
interactive communication between political parties and citizens, it also offers, through platforms
such as Facebook and Twitter, the opportunity for individual politicians to profile themselves
(Kruikemeier, Noort, Vliegenthart, Vreese, 2013)3. The notion of transversality has indeed shifting
politician’s mindset, more exploration needed in terms of using this new media technologies as a
platform to understand its’ constituent dynamic.
The emergence of the internet as a new platform (or interface) has allowed for a massive shift in the
use of media, this become the basis of this paper which attempts to elaborate how politician starts to
use social media instead of conventional media. In this paper, the use of social media in political
marketing communication is being analyzed. If we are looking from the perspective of social media,
marketing communications efforts is known to involve a certain degree of authority. Unlike social
media, there is more control involved in most marketing communication campaign. There are
established rules and ethical standard with regards to advertising or any other communication
campaign. Thus, when social media offers a little less authority, politician starts to see social media as
one of the medium to personalize the communication channel. According to Van Santen and Van
Zoonen (in Kruikemeier et al, 2012), personalization is most likely to take place in new media
channels given that the specific features used in new and social media ‘are designed to facilitate a
direct link between sender (politician) and receiver (citizen), and vice versa’ (Van Santen and Van
Zoonen, 2010)4, which consequently brings individual politicians to the forefront.
Thus, it is about personalizing the political campaign. One of the key examples of this movement can
be observed in the 2008 United States Presidential Election Race, where Obama personified himself,
arguably, through social media. During the election, political marketers were integrating social media
2
Genosko, Gary. Félix Guattari: An Aberrant Introduction (London and New York: Continuum, 2002).
Kruikemeier, Noort, Vliegenthart, Vreese (2013). Getting closer: The effects of personalized and interactive
online political communication. European Journal of Communication published online 1 January 2013. DOI:
10.1177/0267323112464837
4
Van Santen R and Van Zoonen L (2010) The personal in political television biographies. Biography
33(1): 46–67.
3
and online marketing tactics. In the past, American politicians have relied on basic marketing skills
such as campaign buttons, posters, political rallies and campaign speeches to familiarize voters with
a name, a party, and a platform. Going back to Franklin D. Roosevelt, all modern day presidents have
relied on marketing to a greater or lesser degree to communicate their message to the American
people (Newman 1994)5. The application of social media and online marketing techniques and
strategies by Obamas’ political marketers represents a paradigm shift that will continue to change
politics as we know it today.
Interactive political communication only appeared for the first time in Indonesian Political campaigns
in 2012. Ahmad6, in his paper entitled The Political Marketing and the Future of Indonesian
Democracy: Assessing Its Inherent Critiques, Challenges and Opportunities, the successful campaign
strategy that was utilized by candidates such as Obama during the 2008 and 2012 US Presidential
Election clearly inspired many politicians around the world. His paper also introduces the notion of
Integrated-Participatory Political Marketing (IPPM), which became the central point in the
contemporary local election in Indonesia. One event which marked these changes is the 2012
Gubernatorial Election of Special Region of Jakarta, since this was the first local election to make use
of online media. Soon after that, more candidates in other state level electoral race in Indonesia
began to integrate social media in their online marketing tactics.
First, how the critical decision made by political candidates to attempt to use social media is made
and whether the outcomes will lead to a paradigm shift from offline towards online media will be
discussed. On one hand, social media may work by capturing the undecided voter pool. However, on
the other hand, traditional media is still the central force in political spending. The impact of the
technological innovations witnessed in Indonesia in recent times can be seen in political spending.
For example, politicians have decided to use technology in order to communicate directly with
voters.
5
Newman, B.L., (nd) A Review in Political Marketing: Lessons from Recent Presidential Elections. DePaul
University
6
Ahmad, N. (2013). The Political Marketing and the Future of Indonesian Democracy:
Assessing Its Inherent Critiques, Challenges and Opportunities. Paper for International Conference on the
Indonesian Development (ICID), The Hague-Netherlands, 12-13 Sept 2013 (Forthcoming, quoted with
permission)
However since Indonesia is a developing country, the issue of the digital divide still emerges. Another
aspect to be considered as well to answer this phenomenon is with regards to political culture, and
this paper will refer to Koesters paper. With regards to political culture, research conducted by
Koesters7 in 2012 examined the tendencies of Indonesian voters. Based on Koesters’ research, there
was significant indication that Indonesian is mostly influenced by media and social environments
when it comes to their political decision. During 2004 parliamentary and presidential elections in
Indonesia, opinion of others influenced 18% of the voters and the research also indicated that the
majority of Indonesian voters are likely to be influenced by the media and by their social
environment. This finding is significant enough, because if Indonesian’s political culture are
influenced by others, social media has indeed play a strong role in terms of influencing the political
culture in Indonesia.
The article states that in 2004, TV continued to be the main medium used by politicians for political
advertising. Given that the main role of political marketers is to organize effort to influence the
decision making processes within a specific group, conventionally, these political marketers mainly
used paid media such as newspaper, radio, television, etc. Although interaction can be offered
though any kind of media, including conventional media, however social networks thrive on the
shared views, opinions and beliefs (Fill, 2009)8.
Upon examination of several political races in Indonesia starting from 2012, it becomes clear that
political campaigners have changed their conventional paradigm. According to Enli and Skogerbo9,
the internet is now a core element of modern political campaigns. In 2012, political campaigners for
Joko Widodo and Basuki “Ahok” in the Jakarta Governor Election used communication technology in
order to enable enable faster communication.
7
Koesters, T., (2012) Political Culture in Indonesia. Retrieve from http://www.asiastudies.de/?p=509#print
(Sept 2nd, 2013)
8
Fill, C., (2009). Marketing Communications: Interactivity, Communities and Content (5th Edition). FT: Prentice
Hall
9
Enli, Sara Gunn; Skogerbø, Eli (2013). "Personalized campaigns in party-centred politics". Information,
Communication & Society 16 (5): 757.
In a study of Norwegian election campaigns, politicians reported that they used social media for
marketing and for dialogue with voters (Enli and Skogerbo, 2013)10. This suggests that social media is
being used by politicians around the world to market themselves and as a platform to created
dialogue with voters. These Internet technologies are used for cause-related fundraising, lobbying,
volunteering, and community building, and organizing. After Joko Widodo and Basuki won the
election, more political candidates also began using the internet to promote their election
campaigns. One of the memorable stepping stone was when the President of Republic Indonesia
decided to create Facebook and Twitter accounts, even though he was already in his second term as
head of state. This paper is not focused in this particular case, however important to note in this case
is how Facebook and twitter were used differently by the president.
Facebook was mainly used as the primary platform while twitter was used for more continuous
dialogue. With regards to the use of interactive tools, new media channels are being used to engage
voters. An analysis by Lyons (2008) of my.BarrackObama.com demonstrates that the campaign
brought the spotlight onto the importance of using internet in new-age political campaigning by
utilizing various forms of social media and new media (including Facebook, YouTube and a custom
generated social engine) to reach new target populations. In Indonesia, internet political
campaigning ended resulted in lower costs and was a more efficient method of mobilizing voters,
especially young ones. It was also stated that social media could also increase participation among
various voter populations. For example, Lyons11 believes that this new form of media was very
successful for Barrack Obama in reaching the younger population.
The revolution in communication media has shaped the way people communicate within their
community; this includes the use of new social media in Indonesia. Communication media, including
information and communication technologies (ICTs), have become an abundant part of the lives of
people in Indonesia, and have revolutionized the communication media.
10
Ibid
Lyons, Daniel (2008-11-22). "President 2.0". Newsweek.com. Retrieved 2010-05-11. "Obama harnessed the
grass-roots power of the Web to get elected. How will he use that power now?"
11
Looking back at the 2012 Gubernatorial Election of Special Region of Jakarta, the candidates
successfully established relational Political Marketing Management as an organizational philosophy
that lead to better constituency services based on long-term policies. It is fair to say that today
political marketers in Indonesia are focusing their spending on online advertising. With regards to
interactive political communication, the tendency to spend more effort on online advertising has
changed the political culture in Indonesia. In a way, the political culture has become more
transversal.
Firmly to say, there was some indication of negative effects created by social media too. During the
campaign period, on several social media sites there were misleading reports circulating regarding
the candidates on websites such as detik.com. However what should be highlighted is how Joko
Widodo and Basuki Ahok used their facebook account (https://www.facebook.com/Jokowi.Basuki) to
tackle the situation. During the mishap, Facebook was used to make a statement to clarify the issue.
At present, support for Jokowi in the 2014 presidential elections has started to build. A twitter
account has been made with the name @Joko_widodo2014 which has been active since July 6th
2013, however at the time this paper was written there are not so many other users following this
account. At present 1600 tweets have been posted to the account. Furthermore the hashtag
#Capres2014, which can roughly be translated as future president 2014 is being used.
A direct interview with Joko Widodo was impossible due to the scheduling conflicts and time
constraints, however secondary data can be gathered from several interviews conducted with his
campaign team to distinguish how to better leverage online and social media to keep and win
supporters. Joko Widodo and Basuki Ahok used PolMark to manage the political campaign, during
the campaign period in 2012. In 2012, Jakarta chose their new governor and Joko Widodo receive
53,82% of total votes. It may not be a huge win, however it was a phenomenal victory since Joko
Widodo and Basuki Ahok were campaigning against a very strong incumbents. Joko Widodo and
Basuki Ahok’s campaign team still acknowledge the fact that the most important medium in political
campaign is still direct contact. Thus, they are still being encouraged to directly meet with their
primary constituents.
Social media is thought to be especially relevant for those in the upper classes of society as well as
those with higher educational backgrounds. This has become one the strongest critiques in social
media, as Indonesia is very ethnically diverse given that social media cannot reach all the classes of
society. Despite all that, social media has been important for gathering two segments at once: the
public opinion leaders and broader audiences. Although Joko Widodo and Basuki Ahok’s campaign
team still believe that the most effective method is directly meeting with constituent, followed by
media coverage, social media still plays an important role in gathering two factors at one time.
In conclusion, interactive marketing changes political messaging. Even though Indonesia is very
ethnically diverse, internet technology may be a way to answer the challenges of connecting this
diversity. The victory of Joko Widodo and Basuki Ahok is partly influenced by the way they were using
social media, and it indicates that internet technology offers an opportunity to bridge the ethnic
variety.