The Influence of Social Media On People’s Political Preferences: Evidence From The Indonesian Presidential Elections In 2019

Abstract

This paper discuss about the influence of social media on people’s political preferences, the case of Indonesia presidential elections in 2019. Social media as a new communication platform used in elections in several democratic countries specifically in Indonesia. From several existing social media platforms, the two social media platform in this paper used are Twitter and Instagram. This is because most of social media users especially when it comes to the youth in Indonesia use both social media (Twitter and Instagram) compared to the other types of social media. The purpose of this paper is to examine and analyze the influence of the social media on political preferences of Indonesians in 2019. This is an attempt to understand social media as a new communication technology in the modern era of presidential elections. This paper uses a variety of qualitative methods to examine the data. The data sources were online survey, agencies (several survey institutions), newspapers, and some published research reports. The data analysis in this paper can be used to measure the influence of social media on people’s political preferences in Indonesia. The result of this study shows the impact of social media on people’s political preferences. It is also strengthen by the data analysis that social media has big and small influence on people’s political preferences in the 2019 presidential election.