Disappearance of Genuine Communication in Hashtag Twitter on Indonesian Presidential Election 2019
Karman (a*), Bambang Mudjiyanto (a)

Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, Indonesia

Abstract

This article discusses the hashtags usage on Twitter in Indonesian politics (2019 presidential election). Ideally, Twitter users use hashtags to talk about topics that match the hashtag name. However, they use hashtags, in the context of the 2019 presidential election, for messages that are not related to the hashtag name itself. This paper shows that the use of hashtags is not used to discuss messages in certain topics. Twitter users make use of hashtags to make hashtags in the position of trending topics. Twitter users of each supporter of the presidential candidates competing for hashtags. The hashtag name has no relevance to the content of the message content. Each group that provides support to one of the presidential candidates has an opinion leader, both authentic accounts or an anonymous one. Hashtag in a political context is used for the orchestration of public opinion. Opinion leaders in certain hashtags are like the conductor in a chorus that guiding their followers (buzzers). Those who engage in hashtag often exhibit inauthentic activity. In closing, this article provides methodological implications if hashtag is used for the unit of analysis in research. The problem with the hash tag methodology is unclear population, problematic interaction parameters.

Keywords: Political Participation, Indonesia Presidential Election 2019, Genuine Communication

Topic: New Media: Impacts, Benefits, and Barriers