Partisipasi Politik dan Demokrasi di Media Sosial:(Analisis wacana pada Fecebook dan Twitter dalam Pemilu Presiden 2014)

Gloria M.P.Djurubassa, Amalinda Savirani

2017 | Tesis | Politik dan Pemerintahan

Abstract This study was aimed to analyze society’s political participation in democracy in Indonesia via social media. Social media has provided space for the society to freely make media functions more democratically. In 2013, the accumulated number of social media users (facebook and twitter) in Indonesia was 19.20% of the total Indonesian population, and made Indonesia the country with the 4th biggest number of social media users in the world with 47 million Facebook users and 19.7 million Twitter users. This condition illustrated the large potential of social media in influencing the society’s political participation. Although 2014 wasn’t the first year social media was used in presidential election campaign, social media was stronger and had enormous role as a means for political participation during the 2014 presidential election. This study tried to determine how the society’s political participation was represented by the netizens in political campaign discourses in 2014 presidential election. The research method of this thesis was critical discourse with Nourman Fairclough analysis approach, which was performed by analyzing discourses through campaign issues in social media and sorting them by keywords, e.g. popular issues related to presidential candidate. This study found three interesting things. Firstly, social media provides space for communication, interaction and information for the users, so that social media starts to be massively used as a means for political participation. The campaign team of every presidential candidate had used social media to gain support. Moreover, the supporters of every candidate also used social media to express their political participations. It was different from the previous media because usually people’s political participation had difficulty entering public space due to pressure from capital owners. Meanwhile, through social media, various communication and interaction strategies can form public opinion and influence and benefit the candidates greatly. Secondly, in the past political participation was performed conventionally with various limitations. But now through social media, people can express their aspirations related to political issues more openly and with various alternatives. The higher the number of alternative channels of political participation, the stronger the democracy and potential to improve its quality, because people’s opportunity to monitor, control and criticize the government is greater, meaning it’s possible to ensure that power remains democratic. Lastly, social media can be a double-edged sword. It can be the strength and weakness of democracy. For example, the negative effect of anonymity is one can hide their real identity and assume fake identity to do counterproductive actions with democratic spirit by performing black campaign or spreading negative issues on candidate in social media. Keywords: Political participation, Social Media, 2014 Presidential Election and Democracy

Kata Kunci : Partisipasi Politik; Demokrasi