Newsletter — May 2015

SOCIAL MEDIA EVALUATION ON FIRST HALF-YEAR IN THE OFFICE

2

Dear Valued Clients,

Six month have passed since we, as a nation, elected a

new president, Joko Widodo, to lead and serve the

country. After the last evaluation point on the First

100 Days mark, this month we would like to present

to you an extended evaluation on Jokowi and his

government to see the development up until the First

Half-Year mark.

Within the semester, we have observed many issues

dominated the conversation topics on social media,

especially Twitter. Here we would like to see how it

impacted the perception about Jokowi as well as his

minister in Kabinet Kerja.

Similar to the last evaluation, we would not only

provide you with raw data, but also with more

indepth information on the topic discussed, sentiment

development, as well as perception indexing.

Furthermore, we also tried to compare how the

different conversational trend occur within the past six

month in order to see the different ways people

responding to variety of issues and information.

We hope to continue providing you with insightful read,

and hopefully you have a productive month ahead.

Best Regards,

Iwan Setyawan, CEO

WORDS FROM THE CEO

EDITORIAL TEAM Board of Advisors

Iwan Setyawan, Roby Muhamad, PhD,

Shafiq Pontoh, Budhi Sumarso

Managing Editor

Smita Sjahputri

Smita.Sjahputri@provetic.com

Jl. Kerinci 1 no. 2, Kebayoran Baru

Jakarta Selatan 12120

T: +6221 72799613

F: +6221 72799613

www.provetic.com

3

Last February, our Provetic Newsletter had

presented to you the analysis of social media

conversation on the elected President Joko

widodo (Jokowi) and his line of ministers; as

part of the First 100 Days evaluation of the

newly appointed nation leaders.

In the previous analysis, we utilized the social

media conversation data to provide insights

revealing the reaction of Indonesian people

toward several prominent issues surrounding

the new government. Furthermore, we also

provided data on the popularity, perception, and

significant issues of the ministers in Jokowi’s

Kabinet Kerja.

This May, Joko Widodo has finally reached the

half-way point of his first year as the President

of Indonesia. Within this period, Provetic has

gathered and evaluated the social media

conversation data to see how the opinion of

Indonesian people towards Jokowi and his line

of ministers have developed and evolved. Using

Twitter data from November 2014 up to first

two weeks of April 2015, we have managed to

identify several interesting points about people’s

perception and opinion of Jokowi and his

Kabinet Kerja’s ministers.

Consistent with our previous sentiment, we

always believe that social media conversation

data can be treated as one of the most valuable

and readily available source of information to

help identify Indonesian people’s general

reaction and sentiment toward certain issues.

Not only it would be beneficial in understanding

the mass, but it also proven to be insightful to

help indicating government success and

managing crisis.

In this current analysis on Jokowi’s first six

months in the Office, we focused our analysis on

three main points: (1) major issues that

managed to grab public’s attention and

generated various reactions; (2) general trend

on public’s perception of Jokowi; and (3)

popularity and public’s awareness on the

government’s programs —especially those

stated in Jokowi’s Nawacita.

In the second part, we would also be looking into

the popularity and conversation surrounding the

line of ministers in Jokowi’s Kabinet Kerja.

Similar to the previous analysis, we would also

present the perception index of the top ten most

popular ministers based on Twitter conversation

for approximately six months.

REACHING THE HALF-YEAR POINT: SOCIAL MEDIA EVALUATION ON OUR LEADERS, SO FAR

4

Public’s interest in Jokowi has

been steadily high, as indicated

in the conversation volume

throughout the six months,

averaging at approximately

15,000 tweets per day. However,

it is also observed that there’s no

significant conversational peak

happening in the latest three-

month period.

Peaks driven by specific

topics occurred mostly on the

first three-month period;

however some topics

continue to become massive

concerns despite the lack of

significant daily spike in

conversation level

In general, the level of Twitter

conversation regarding Jokowi

observed in the last six months

indicated that the Indonesian

public showed a great interest in

keeping close monitor on the new

president’s moves and decisions.

The most prominent issue that

generated heated response at the

beginning of Jokowi’s term was the

decision to eliminate the subsidy

plan for fuel, which resulted in

direct price increase of fuel and

indirect price increase of other

commodities. As mentioned in the

previous analysis on fuel price

increase, this decision incited a

highly polarized reaction by the

public.

On January 2015, another

prominent controversy surfaced

following the nomination of Budi

Gunawan for the position of

National Police Chief (Kapolri).

Public immediately reacted to this

news, as indicated by the

dominating top topics in the

month of January. The situation

escalated when the Corruption

Eradication Commission (KPK)

announced Budi Gunawan as

suspect in ‘fat account’ case just a

few days following the

nomination.

What happened next was what

people referred to as the “KPK vs.

Polri” scandal – which involved a

few detainments of KPK officers by

the police, which resulted in

people’s pressurizing the

president to take his stance in the

matter.

The two cases served as an

example of the different way

people responding to issues on

social media. While the fuel price

issue appeared to have elicited

extreme response from social

media users, despite the

prominent conversation spike, it

appeared that public’s reaction to

fuel price increase is relatively

short-lived.

On the other hand, the issue on

5

N = 2,686,829 tweets

“KPK vs. Polri” appeared to linger

for relatively longer period of time

in the Twitter conversational

landscape.

Although the issue never reached

the same conversational peak as

the peak in conversation regarding

of fuel price, but it is observed that

the conversation managed to

withhold people’s attention and

dominated for a good several

months — indicating greater and

continuous interest from the

public.

Controversial issues are

topping the charts of most

discussed topics within

conversation about Jokowi,

which might have led to a

decline in support by the

public as expressed in Twitter

In the previous first three month

period analysis, we have observed

that there’s a decline in the

positive sentiment within the

conversation regarding Jokowi.

High optimism, indicated by 65%

positive sentiment proportion, had

been consistently declining from

the initial high on November 2014

all the way to January 2015.

As we extended time frame of the

analysis, we observed that positive

sentiment has continued to

decrease and stabilize at a low

point, during the month of

February-March 2015, coincided

with the rising of “KPK vs. Polri”

issue. No significant changes

occurred in the proportion of both

sentiment in the few months that

followed indicated that positive

Chart I — Daily Buzz and

Conversational Peak’Top

Topics on Jokowi

6

sentiment has not yet bounced

back up –and most probably, so

does the general support level for

the president.

What contributed to this decline?

Other than the fuel price and “KPK

vs Polri” issues, closer look into the

other top dominating topics

during the first six month period

of Jokowi in the Office suggested

that most of them revolved around

controversial issues, such as the

capital punishment for “Bali Nine”

drugs smugglers, anti-corruption

sentiment and corruption

eradication efforts, as well as

banning of several Islamic online

media.

It is not surprising that these

highly loaded issues —be it with

humanitarian messages as well as

religious ones— elicited polarized

and heated responses.

Unfortunately, it appeared that

these issues contributed in

lowering the public support for

Jokowi, as indicated by the

increase in negative sentiment

within the conversation

throughout the first six months in

the Office.

into the top expressed public

expression about Jokowi and his

leadership so far.

Most expressed aspirations

targeted to Jokowi in social

media has been consistently

about hoping the president to

be more “Brave” and “Stern” in

all his decision and political

stance

Although expression of support for

the President is still the one of the

highest impression people

expressed on Twitter, however it

is alarming that negative

impressions such as expression of

regret to have voted for Jokowi

(indicated by the term “Salah

Pilih”) and reference to Jokowi’s

term as “Rezim Jokowi” has made it

As a comparison, conversation

regarding Jokowi’s nomination of

Budi Gunawan as the Chief of

National Police Force generated

more than 100,000 organic tweets

(excluding bots).

Meanwhile, the most popular

government program of “Tiga

Kartu Sakti”, or the Three Power

Cards as part of national welfare

program to provide free basic

healthcare and education for all

Indonesian citizen, only generated

around 15,000 organic tweets in

the past six months.

This suggested that there’s a gap

in people’s understanding and

awareness of government

programs that can be utilized to

promote the government (and the

president) in a better light among

the controversial issues.

The launching of “Tiga Kartu

Sakti” Jokowi elevated the

program in popularity;

Unfortunately, other

Nawacita programs might

have not gained any

momentum yet, so far

Apart from evaluating Jokowi as a

figure, Twitter conversation can

also be utilized in evaluating

people’s awareness of the

government programs.

Unfortunately, in the case of

Jokowi, it appears that people are

so much more interested in

discussing about controversial

cases and issues instead of

discussing about the specific

government’s programs.

7

SOCIAL MEDIA CONVERSATION IN NUMBERS

Chart IV — Development of sentiment distribution in

the conversation of Jokowi

Chart II — Top Impression from conversation about

Jokowi’s first 6 Months in the Office

Chart III— Most Popular Government Programs

(Based on Nawacita’s categorization and terms)

8

highly popular especially in the

evaluation of First 100 Days in the

Office.

In the second place, Minister of

Youth and Sports Affair, Imam

Nahrawi has also risen in

popularity, especially because

Indonesian Soccer Committee

(PSSI) had been under the hot seat

of criticism after a lack of

achievement from the National

Team under PSSI. As soccer

appears to be one of the sports that

was being hold dearly by

Indonesian, public’s demand for

Imam Nahrawi to fight for the

National Team and to rule against

PSSI (one of the indicator being the

Twitter hash-tag #bekukanPSSI)

has helped to improve the minister

standing in popularity. Imam also

received one of the most positive

perception by the public.

Other than Imam Nahrawi, other

minister who also being perceived

most positively are Minister for

Acceleration Development

Backward Regions Marwan Jafar,

Minister for Religious Affair

Lukman Hakim Saifudin , and

Minister of Culture and Secondary

Education Anies Baswedan.

Marwan Jafar, with his hashtag

#MenteriDesa appeared to

embrace Twitter to promote

development issues in rural areas

— which seems to have gain good

feedback from Twitter.

Meanwhile, the Minister of Justice

and Human Rights, Yasonna Laoly

has the lowest index for positive

perception. The impact on his

ruling regarding the dispute within

political party Golkar had made

him being referred to as having

“double standard” by the people.

Chart V — Top 10 most popular

ministers from “Kabinet Kerja”

Most positively perceived

Minister

Most negatively perceived

Minister

Provetic developed a stricter

filter to gather and track data on

Jokowi’s Kabinet Kerja minister

so that the dataset only included

organic tweets (not driven by

bots/machines). We look into

collective evaluation of the

public for the cabinet ministers’

first six months in the Office and

laid out perception of the public

regarding this minister in an

index form.

Minister of Foreign Affair,

Retno Mursadi managed to

become the most popular,

followed by Minister of

Youth and Sports Affair,

Imam Nahrawi

Upon the completion of the First

Six-Month period in the Office, a

series of events had catapulted

the Minister of Foreign Affair,

Retno Mursadi into popularity.

Most specifically, issues such as

the evacuation of Indonesian in

Yemen, “Bali Nine” drug

smugglers’ death sentences and

the highly regarded event of Asian

-African Conference held in

Indonesia last month had made

Retno Mursadi the most popular

minister in Jokowi’s Kabinet Kerja.

She was surprisingly outshining

“media darling” ministers such as

Susi Pudjiastuti, Anies Baswedan,

and Ignasius Jonas —who were all

9

Over the course of six month

period, conversation regarding

Jokowi as the elected President

of Indonesia has been

relentless. People have put very

close scrutiny over many of the

president moves and decision

—almost readily reactive to any

controversial issues that might

arise.

However, looking at the

conversational trend and the

top topics analysis, it is

indicative that people were

more interested in discussing

about loaded issues and more

general decision made by both

the president or the

government, instead of

evaluating the specific

programs of the government.

Among a few popular Nawacita

and governmental programs

that made Jokowi’s campaign

material, it appears that only

the “Tiga Kartu Sakti” program

launch that receive some

attention from the public.

Apart from the “Tiga Kartu

Sakti”, only the catchphrase

“Revolusi Mental” as well as the

“Kabinet Kerja” that was being

regularly referred to by the

public.

This provide an opportunity for

both the presidential team as

well as other government

official to fill in the gap within

the public awareness of the

current implementation of

government programs to

present the government in

better light —instead of

responding to other

controversial issues (which

might always arise, inevitably).

This move might be a good

approach since we observed

that the continuous discussions

over controversial and loaded

issues, such as the capital

punishment, “KPK vs. Polri”, as

well as other issues that might

have touched the sensitive

areas of religion in Indonesia;

might have led to lowered

Positive sentiment in the

conversation regarding Jokowi

—which might be translated as

lowered support or

sympathetic sentiment.

However, although promoting

government programs might be

a good short-term fix for public

relation; we believe that Jokowi

and his ministers had to

improve many ways aspects of

the Indonesian lives in order to

gain back the support and

optimism expressed by the

public in the beginning of the

term.

By responding to the common

themes of people concerns —

fuel supply, corruption

eradication and law

enforcement, and economic

stability— and matching it with

appropriate program on the

list, government can help the

public to see how they address

the public’s most pressing issue

and improve their welfare on

daily basis.

KEY TAKEAWAYS AND

FURTHER IMPLICATIONS

© May 2015 — Provetic

Photo Credits:

Cover Photo by Wikipedia

1. “Dukung KPK” by Tempo

2. by US Embassy State Dept./Erik A. Kurniawan

All rights under Creative Commons Liscense