Scientific research concerning the Small Stories Study of the Jokowi Supporters Facebook Group (Pakde Jokowi) and the Prabowo Supporters Facebook Group (Prabowo untuk NKRI) in the 2019 Presidential Election Campaign was an interesting topic studied by Dr. Triyono Lukmantoro, S.Sos., M.Si., Lecturer at the Department of Communication Science, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Universitas Diponegoro.

The phenomenon of the presidential election shows that electoral procedures have indeed been carried out properly, that is, free, fair and peaceful have been realized. Dr. Triyono’s research corpus was various posts and comments that formed interactive “small stories” that had a number of narratives displayed by a Facebook group supporting Jokowi (Pakde Jokowi) and a Facebook group supporting Prabowo (Prabowo untuk NKRI).

“Social media used as a propaganda arena does not provide opportunities for dissent. The creation of Facebook groups in this presidential election campaign was principally driven to support a particular presidential candidate. The number of members of the supporting Facebook groups is considered a success in mobilizing the masses digitally to create a winner. Thus, the accounts that joined the Facebook groups showed similar thoughts and similar interests,” he explained.

According to him, the propaganda narratives that appeared in social media showed that political practices had become more widespread in the digital world. In the beginning, propaganda was carried out in mass media with one-way communication, as was said by Harold D. Lasswell. This means that propaganda is carried out by a small number of people to influence or manipulate a large audience or the mass.

The masses seem to be easily influenced by these propaganda-laden messages. Meanwhile, because the masses do not own the media, they are considered unable to respond and are considered to just follow whatever is put forward by the propagandists. Today, when social media continues to grow in use, these one-sided or one-way claims can no longer be maintained.

“Initially, these supporters want to be exposed to similar information. They have the same perspective in assessing a problem. What then happens is that social media, in this case the Facebook groups of supporters, only become an echo chamber or cocoon of information that does nothing more than echo their own version of the truth,” continued Dr. Triyono.  (Lin-PR)

Source: undip.ac.id