The Use of Social Media by Bantul Electoral Commission to Increase Voters’ Participation in 2020 Regent Election

Abstract

Social media has become a massive platform to disseminate information relating the 2020 regent election in Bantul. But how exactly the social media is used in increasing public participation is still in question. This research explores how social media is used by Bantul Electoral Commission (KPU Bantul) to increase participation in the 2020 Bantul regent election (Pilkada) by concentrating on four main issues: The themes and contents in social media; The narrations developed on social media; The relationship between themes and contents in disseminating information related to the election; and how is the activity of the KPU Bantul's account during the 2020 Pilkada. This research uses Qualitative Data Analysis Software (Q-DAS) by employing the NVivo 12Plus. This study finds that first, social media have become the platform to increase participation in 2020 Bantul Pilkada by concentrating on three themes: "Political Party", "Candidate", and "Voter", in which the highest content in KPU Bantul's social media tends to inform the Regional Election phases in Bantul Regency. Second, the narration in social media is used to increase and attract the voters to participate in Bantul regent election, with the most frequent word appears are "Bantul", "KPU", and "Election". Third, the relation of the content and theme on social media is no strong enough. Fourth, the Twitter Account of KPU Bantul to inform the election is not very active because there are some delays in the Bantul Regent Election regarding to Covid-19. Nevertheless, this research also has some limitations. This research mainly concerns with how social media can increase participation without exploring the issues of the campaign. This opens any opportunities to further researches that focus to explore the campaign issues in Indonesian Pilkada. This research implicates to any novelty to the using of social media in election by concluding that social media has been used as a platform to spread information during the electoral phases by using Content and Narration, in which the previous research mostly merely explores the function of social media as a tool in a candidate's campaign.