Tweeting for Power: Social Media and Political Campaigning in Indonesia

Anders Johansson

No 2016-43, Stockholm School of Economics Asia Working Paper Series from Stockholm School of Economics, Stockholm China Economic Research Institute

Abstract: Social media provides political actors, opinion makers, and the electorate with the opportunity to bypass traditional media and engage in direct exchange of political information. This article explores how political candidates in the 2014 legislative election in Indonesia used social media during their political campaign. Exploiting a unique hand-collected data set, the study sheds light on personal characteristics that have explanatory power for political candidates’ choice to engage over social media. It also provides insight into the content of politicians’ messages and drivers for different types of content. The findings suggest that social media is used by a relatively large percentage of politicians in Indonesia and that they use social media platforms such as Twitter to engage with their electorate on several topics related to their campaign during election periods.

Keywords: Indonesia; Social media; Elections; Politics; Democratic process; Political process; Media industry (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 L82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 43 pages
Date: 2016-12-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-pol and nep-sea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:hascer:2016-043

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