The Spread of PSBB Issue in Twitter
Data mining in this research obtained 5,000 tweets using #psbb and including keyword ‘psbb’ in each tweet. Within these data, the actors or users could be grouped into individual user, group or community user, and online media user. It is somehow questioning that during the pandemic of CoVID–19, the issue of PSBB appears mostly by an entertainment actors, when seeing from each number of relations. By the most frequent words in order there are ‘psbb’ (4,181), ‘gak’ (776), ‘pembatasan’ (469), ‘sosial’ (461), ‘covid’ (444), ‘kalo’ (401), ‘mudik’ (382), ‘berujung’ (344), ‘fiersabesari’ (343), and ‘bubaran’ (341). In general, there are around five most frequent issues within the issue of PSBB in Indonesia, (1) Fiersa Besari who tweet about the PSBB’s stand for pembatasan sosial berujung bubaran, (2) Lisa Amartatara who tweet about a doctor take care of patient, (3) Yunarto Wijaya who emphasize that in order to do relaxation, President Jokowi must sure about massive rapid test, (4) The Ministry of Transportation who responsible to make policy about people’ movements, and (5) the government need to monitor people’s movements to their hometown.
And then, if we look closely into association of two words in the data, it is found that phrase ‘pembatasan sosial’ being the most frequent phrase which is reach to 438 appearances. Followed by ‘psbb pembatasan’ (344), ‘sosial berujung’ (338), ‘berujung bubaran’ (335), and ‘fiersabesari psbb’ (332), etcetera. To make it clearer, the phrases were then collected by four phrase category. It resulted that at the top appearance is about ‘pembatasan sosial berujung bubaran’. Followed by ‘fiersabesari psbb pembatasan sosial’, ‘jokowi kalo relaksasi juni’, ‘lisaamartatara bksemoga almarhumah dokter’, ‘yunartowijaya jokowi kalo relaksasi’, ‘larangan mudik menhub daerah’, ‘mardanialisera kurva covid sulit’, ‘kurva covid sulit turun’, and ‘tka china pribumi phk’, etcetera. From these examples of four phrases within tweet responding to PSBB case, it can be seen some user of individu like musician Fiersa Besari, political figures like President Jokowi, Executive Director of Charta Politika Indonesia Yunarto Wijaya, Member of House of Representavies from PKS Party Mardani Ali Sera, while Lisa Amartatara is still questioned about the true identity.
Actors and Their Networks’ Movements
Aside to the spread of PSBB issue, tweets data could also be described into maps of networks. From 5,000 tweets during the tweet mining on May 6th, 2020, there are around 4,480 active users (Nodes) who have 4760 relations (Edges) to others in total. Seeing the statistics of the network, it has modularity value of 0.864 which resulting 393 sub communities within the networks, it has network diameter value of 13 and graph density value of 0.000. This low density is quite interesting somehow. It means that networks of PSBB issue are seemingly appeared in many users, but these users are less connected to each other. As seen on Figure 2 and in relation to preliminary findings, there are some actors who appeared dominantly in this network of PSBB issue. They are Fiersa Besari, Lisa Amartatara, and Yunarto Wijaya. Their appearance within this network of PSBB issue means that they have high degree centrality. In other words, they may have more followers than others. So that when these actors post certain issue, followers will respond both by commenting and by retweeting or spreading the post in their timeline.
This finding is unique since there is entertainer or musician actor who get involve in PSBB issue. While other users were showing their intention of PSBB issue in a troublesome sense, this musician and his followers tend to give it a little jokes in responding to PSBB issue by relating to personal relationship break of youngsters. During this period, there is also an issue concerning to PSBB in advance, that is the permission for people to go to their hometown. This issue atracts enough attention from Twitter users, from those who agree to the issue until from those who critize the issue. Those who critize the issue concern to government’s ambiguity of stating any policy. Previously stated that the government prohibits the movements of people to other cities, especially for those who come from infected regions or red zones. And when it changes oppositely, people aware better not to go anywhere until the masive rapid test of CoVID–19 is conducted in nation-wide scale.
People awareness toward PSBB issue could be seen through their activities in Twitter, especially through their tendency of being central actors in discussing the issue. Degree centrality in a network consists of in-degree centrality (number of mentioned by other users) and out-degree centrality (number of user’s posts or tweets). Ten user with the highest degree centrality are FiersaBesari with 336 degree centrality (consist of 5 in-degree and 331 out-degree), yunartowijaya with 238 degree centrality (13 in-degree and 225 out-degree), LisaAmartatara3 with 225 degree centrality (10 in-degree and 215 out-degree), makibao_indo with 117 degree centrality (0 in-degree and 117 out-degree), MardaniAliSera with 101 degree centrality (6 in-degree and 95 out-degree), marlina_idha with 75 degree centrality (3 in-degree and 72 out-degree), detikcom with 68 degree centrality (37 in-degree and 31 out-degree), negativisme with 67 degree centrality (1 in-degree and 66 out-degree), ainunrozi with 66 degree centrality (0 in-degree and 66 out-degree), and CNNIndonesia with 65 degree centrality (34 in-degree and 31 out-degree).
From those ten highest degree centrality users, there are detikcom, CNNIndonesia, and yunartowijaya who were actively mentioned concerning PSBB issue. But, if we take a look at a narrow point from in-degree centrality only, the ten highest users who are frequently mentioned are jokowi, detikcom, CNNIndonesia, detikfinance, aniesbaswedan, kompascom, TirtoID, yunartowijaya, infobdg, and sbyfess. Interestingly, seven of them are media-like users, except for jokowi, aniesbaswedan, and yunartowijaya. This data showed us that in today’s information society, people could directly deliver opinions onto those who are difficult to reach in real life. Also, media plays a rule of initiating and providing discussion sphere of PSBB issue in this case.
On the other hand, there are other important things like user FiersaBesari who is being the highest closeness centrality within this network. It means that this user is the most reachable actor who become others’ favourite user to be concerned, especially of his posts or tweets. And then, from out-degree point of view, there are actors who are noted active in posting and tweeting, such as user FiersaBesari, yunartowijaya, LisaAmartatara3, makibao_indo, MardaniAliSera, marlina_idha, negativisme, ainunrozi, IwanSumule, and Cantikkk____693. Put them in detail, FiersaBesari is known as entertainer and musician, yunartowijaya is known as director of Charta Politika, LisaAmartatara3 and marlina_idha are also known with her relations to Prabowo Subianto and Sandiaga Uno during 2019 Indonesia’s presidential election, makibao_indo, negativisme, Cantikkk____693 are known as their critics of govenrments’ issues, MardaniAliSera is known as Member of House of Representavies from PKS Party, ainunrozi is known as ordinary user who seems post anything, and IwanSumule is known as a member of Gerindra Party who also critize the governments’ state during CoVID–19 pandemic. Thus, it is known that there are two political parties which tried to take part in discussing PSBB issue. They are PKS Party and Gerindra Party.
Unlike the finding of PSBB issue by musician, when the network is seen to those who have tendencies to spread this issue out, by betweenness centrality, it gives another insights for us to consider. There are users as follows: yunartowijaya, CNNIndonesia, Demokrat_TV, FPD_DPR, FerryFe40732164, and detikcom who tend to play a role in bridging and in becoming source of discussion toward PSBB issue. To put them in detail, Yunarto Wijaya is Executive Director of Charta Politika, CNN Indonesia and detikcom are online news media, FerryFe40732164 is still anonymous, Demokrat_TV is user of Demokrat Party in Indonesia, and FPD_DPR stand for Fraksi Partai Demokrat DPR RI (Demokrat Party of the members of House of Representatives) which has the same insight of Demokrat_TV.
At the first place of betweenness centrality, user yunartowijaya seems actively responding to PSBB issue through Twitter. Seeing his background, user yunartowijaya is Executive Director of Charta Politika, survey consultant institution interested in politics. Another point is this survey institution is one among those of institutions who winning candidacy Joko Widodo during quick count of 2019 presidential election in Indonesia. And then there are online news media such as CNNIndonesia and detikcom. These two medias showed their concern to CoVID–19 pandemic through their pinned tweet in Twitter timeline which is displaying infographics and updates of CoVID–19 in Indonesia. Different characters are found in user Demokrat_TV and FPD_DPR. In Demokrat_TV, it clearly show their interest by pinned the tweet of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s achievement during his presidential era of 2004–2014. While user FPD_DPR showed its participation in responding CoVID–19 by solidarity action and donation of Demokrat Party’s figure Edhie Baskoro Yudhoyono.
Public Participation in Politics
Figure 4 showed the most influential users in discussing PSSB issue on May 6th, 2020. It could be said that these actors are the formers of the issue on that day. Previous analysis showed us that there are ten users with the highest values of betweenness centrality. However among those ten there are only seven users who seem like the influencer and mediator of PSBB issue. They are user yunartowijaya, detikcom, Demokrat_TV, CNNIndonesia, FerryFe40732164, FPD_DPR, and LisaAmartatara3. And they are related to each other, both by direct connection and through mediators. This network is then identified consist of three individual actors and four media-like actors. Compositions of users showed a quite balance of power distribution, there are individual actor, organization of House of Representatives, and online mainstream news media.
In political sense, one who have power will lead the issue and bear his opinion into one’s commentaries, responses, and posts or tweets. Obviously, the one who is being Executive Director of Charta Politika is considered as actor with the most influential power. One possible reason of this occurence is that people and Twitter citizen put more attentions and trusts on him, since this user was proactively involved in last year presidential election on 2019. And then, there are user detikcom and CNNIndonesia, online news media, which appear as mediator of PSBB issue. But, the tendency of each media are quite different. In one hand, detikcom tend to become information source of FPD_DPR, Demokrat_TV, and LisaAmartatara3. On the other hand, CNNIndonesia tend to be in the side with yunartowijaya and FerryFe40732164. It is not surprising that detikcom become information source of some users since its Twitter followers are reach to 15.9 million followers. While CNNIndonesia has only 967 thousand followers.
This is interesting since the number of followers did not influence people in choosing their each preferred media discussing PSBB issue. This differences are somehow needed in todays’ information society. McQuail (2010) emphasized that by this diversity of media characters, people have many choices of what media which fit their expectations. And there is no guarantee when a media enlarging its number of channles and choices, there will be various contents in it. However, this diversity may brought some benefits for society such as opening the way for social changes of powerless and marginal voices to involve in larger society and limiting social conflicts between those who potentially opposed certain groups and interests. McQuail (2010) also added that by those functions of media, there could be seen their links and relations with other entities outside and around the media. The links are about both to control and to strict the expresions of the media. As seen on Figure 5, links and relations to and from the media are consist of many related aspects such as from owners and shareholders, clients such as advertisers and sponsors, regulators such as law maker in order to guarantee public interest, until from those of interest groups.
Thus, if it is compared to sociogram map on Figure 5, there will be found some aspects which relate to media. They are government, public opinions, referents (subject of reporting), and social institutions. Regarding to PSBB issue, these relations indicated a freedom of political and social interest. Seib (2012) added that this kind of condition will empower individuals or citizen to report news, expose wrong doing, express their opinios, mobilize protest, monitor elections, critize government, deepen participation, and strengthen civil society. Further,any actors both individu and public figure, are required to understand that opportunities of online networking in order to obtain their attentions. And fortunately, the users in this core networks seem to be able to use the networks effectively. Getting examples of tweets from each user in this networks, research found that these users are likely understand the use of social network. Each users’ tweets are can be found in Table 3.
PSBB and Social Responses
Through social network analysis on network of PSBB issue, it can be seen that there are users who have certain centrality, but actually did not represent as user who have control within the networks. In recent information society, internet help much as a means of borderless communications and unlimited relations through social media, including Twitter. At the first sight, we may see that there are users who are quite famous in the networks. Of course, this users have many followers on Twitter. Like those ten of FiersaBesari, yunartowijaya, LisaAmartatara3, makibao_indo, MardaniAliSera, marlina_idha, detikcom, negativisme, ainunrozi, and CNNIndonesia.
Although their appearance may looks larger among other users, some of them are less function in moderating and delivering issue of PSBB. In other words, their appearance seems as a outer topic layer of the main issue of PSBB. For example, the tweet of FiersaBesari who said PSBB is stands for Pembatasan Sosial Berujung Bubaran (Social Distancing Ends Up to Relationship Break) which is closely related to youngsters’ jokes rather than the origin Pembatasan Sosial Berskala Besar (Nation-Wide Social Distancing). However, when we look deeper into the networks, there are some core users who are vividly responding to PSBB issue. Such as yunartowijaya, detikcom, Demokrat_TV, CNNIndonesia, FerryFe40732164, FPD_DPR, and LisaAmartatara3. From this point, it is clearly shown that Demokrat Party actively responding to the governmental statements concerning to PSBB decision. Besides, there is also one party who would like to take a part in this network, that is user MardaniAliSera from PKS Party. Unfortunately, his activities in responding PSBB issue are considered as less influencing than what Demokrat Party did.
In terms of power distribution, this networks seem quiet equal based on the numbers of actors which consist of almost fifty-fifty of individual users and online news media. It means that citizens have the power to consume and republish information form online news media, while media would publish a discourse of PSBB issue to be commented and shared by the citizens in Twitter. Regarding to online news media, there are actually other media which also taking part during PSBB issue, like tribunnews, jawapos, liputan6dotcom, kompascom, Metro_TV, republikaonline, kumparan, e100ss, beritasatu, and tirtoid as well. But, seiing from their Twitter timeline, there are less likely the posts or tweets concerning PSBB. Also, there are some governmental office of any regions which respond to PSBB issue, such as humasjabar, pemkotbekasi, and PemkotMalang.