Political Actors Participation within Nation-Wide Social Distancing during CoVID-19 Pandemic in Twitter

DOI: https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-33351/v1

Abstract

Government of Indonesia’s decision after concerning the increasing of CoVID-19 confirmed case evidences is conducted by stating that there must be required an initial step to reduce its spread, that is by nation-wide social distancing (PSBB). Accordingly, this PSBB issue was then responded by citizen in many ways, including through social media Twitter. The aim of the research is to extract the issues and key actors within the social network of Twitter in Indonesia. The research mined around 5,000 tweets on May 6th, 2020, which included the keyword ’psbb’ and hashtag ‘#psbb’. The implementation of PSBB in nation scale actually impacted some sectors in society. By using text mining and Social Network Analysis (SNA), it is found some important key points. First, the issue of PSBB in social media Twitter in Indonesia are mostly about annecdotal terms of PSBB became ‘social distancing ends up to relationship break’ which is initially popularized by entertainer named FiersaBesari rather than the origin ‘nation-wide social distancing’. Second, looking deeper into the core network, it is found that the most influential Twitter user is named yunartowijaya, an executive director of political consultant institution Charta Politika. Third, online news media which actively involved within PSBB issue are detikcom and CNNIndonesia. And fourth, despite each actor’s political interest, especially those of Demokrat Party, almost all key users in this networks are critizing the Government of Indonesia’s ideas and policies of PSBB during CoVID-19 pandemic.

Introduction

Certain issue which is blown up into social media tend to become a wide issue discussed by people and internet user or also known as netizen. As occured in Twitter, one social medias which has high number of users and the second biggest after Facebook (Bruns, 2011), issues are become easily spread out while someone strated to post it. In Indonesia, Twitter is pretty popular used by people. As of January 2019, its users are reach to 6 million users (We are social, 2019). This may indicates that the usage of this social media is quite user friendly and more interactive. Eventhough, the maximum text per post is limited to 144 characters only, its functions in spreading issues are still working properly, especially once a post is including the use of hashtag (#) symbol. The hashtag worked as to categorize and to group every post which have the same interest about certain issue. So that, once a user of Twitter seeked certain issue, this group of users discussing that are apperaing in his or her Twitter account (Xiao, Noro, & Tokuda, 2012; Jungher, 2015).

Today’s recent issue in Indonesia and also in the world is Corona Virus Disease 2019 or known as CoVID–19. The disease which attack respiratory related systems in human body is initially occured in Wuhan district of China. Some restrictions and policies were then deployed there in order to limit the spreading of this virus. Medias noted that the first case in Wuhan is dated about November or December 2019. Until then World Health Organization (WHO) responded and stated that China reported its first case on December 31st, 2019 (WHO Statement, 2020). As the virus spreads out, months later, on March 2020, Government of Indonesia confirmed its first case of CoVID–19. Cited from Indonesia Information Portal, the first cases are of two Indonesian citizen who recently making contact with Japanese citizen in Malaysia while travelling to Indonesia (Nuraini, 2020). And the worse was found later that these people are geting in touch within an event in Jakarta which including many people inside. And from this point, the tracing of those contacts was begun.

Unfortunately, the recent data by WHO as of May 8th, 2020, noted that confirmed cases globally are 3,767,744 confirmed cases of CoVID–19, including 259,593 deaths. While in Indonesia, the cases are 13,112 confirmed, including 943 deaths and 2,494 recovered (National Special Force for Covid–19, 2020). Concerning the increased number of CoVID–19, National Task Force forced the government to respond it appropriately and effectively. After WHO statement of pandemic case for CoVID–19, the Governemnt of Indonesia then arranged task forces for CoVID–19 by Presidential Regulation Number 7 Year 2020 concerning Task Force in order to Reduce Corona Virus Disease 2019 (CoVID–19) which is lead by National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB). Until then the government released Government Regulation Number 21 Year 2020 concerning Nation-Wide Social Distancing (PSBB) in order to Reduce Corona Virus Disease 2019 (CoVID–19).

By PSBB, the government meant to limit certain activities and movements of citizen of the infected regions and to reduce the rates of infected cases as well. The Government of Indonesia was also concern that the disease affected many aspect such as politics, economy, social, cultures, security and deffence, and national welfare. Therefore, such limitations will include limitation of school activities, work acitivities, religious activities, and public service activities. The instruction is then followed up by the governors and city majors in some regions in Indonesia. On the other hand, this policy created many responds and reactions. Hanoatubun (2020) sees this will affect economics aspect of Indonesia in terms of difficulties in getting employed, difficulties in fulfilling daily needs, and difficulties in other economic aspects.

Since there is limitation on school activities, its impacts are ranging from the elementry school to the higher institutions (Dewi, 2020; Pratiwi, 2020). At the elementry school the learning activities which is conducting in home are quite effective since there are good cooperation among students, teachers, and parents. The same condition is also occur in higher education institutions which note that the lectures activities are going appropriately by the help of some online learning methods. Globally, many countries have adopted this kind of learning approaches. On the contrary, there are some challenges in doing so in Indonesia, that is internet connection and appropriate gadgets which applicable for these methods. Cited form The Jakarta Post, it may working well for some, but not for those who are outside the internet reach and no gadgets (Angdhiri, 2020). And to sum up these challenges, Mas’udi & Winanti (2020) see that the disease’s impacts are reach to higher education disruption, transportation and pharmacy industry, marginal society, and reach to management of government’s public communication.

Seeing the intention of the issues of CoVID–19 and the issue of PSBB in Indonesia, there is significant high number of people concerning the issue of PSBB. While the issue of CoVID–19 itself is seemed quite decreasing days to days. The increasing of PSBB issue is could also be found in social media. In Twitter for example, there are many tweets using keyword ‘psbb’ or ‘#psbb’. These tweets are posted by various users who could be an individual user, media user, and even public figure or political figure user. As stated by Bradley (2009) and Henderson & Bowley in Motion, Heath, & Leitch (2016), these kind of users could play a role of building citizens participations and of connecting people to take the same concern of cenrtain issue. And this tendency occured in Twitter especially that of PSBB issue. Therefore, this paper aims to explore and to find out the structures of PSBB issue and the actors who actively make movements within the issue in Twitter as well.

Literature Review

Research of political issue in Twitter had also been conducted by Juditha (2014). She researched the case of ‘Police Versus KPK’ in Twitter and found out that within the case there are two dominant hashtags, they are #saveKPK and #saveIndonesia which indicate that citizens are in the side of KPK (Indonesia’s Corruption Eradiction Commission). And she also find that there is no hands in from the president at that time. Still in the same year, there are also researches concerning social media Twitter which is utilized for political interest. Ardha (2014) noted that todays political actors are knowing the power of social media in order to grasp many supports from citizens. She found there are intens interactions those competing for political campaign 2014. And among those political actors there is Ridwan Kamil, candidacy of governoral election of West Java Province, who also compete in that campaign (Wulansari, 2014). She found out that Ridwan Kamil was actively interacting to his followers in Twitter, including for delivering transparency issue of government, environment issue, health issue, and cultural issue.

The usage of social media is then becoming important in order to spread political interest (Gainous & Wagner, 2014). One of the reasons is, as mentioned by Bennet in Gainous & Wagner (2014), recent information communication systems worked for what people know and for how people understand information. In other words, social media is used by political actors in order to spread their opinions and to shape people’ perceptions (Larsson & Moe; Small in Ausserhofer & Maireder, 2013). And, it is more likely being an opportunity to utilize it to control political information. It means that different approaces used to deliver information will result to different political behavior of people. Gainous & Wagner (2014) had also emphasize that people tend to avoid information that confront their opinions, so that they prefer to information as they want. Then, this will lead to different information received by each social media user. Here, Twitter played roles of information source and of tool to interact with people without physical meeting. Ito in Ausserhofer & Maireder (2013) also added that this interaction could be of bottom-up direction, top-down, and linear side-by-side direction.

Another finding showed that Twitter could be used to spread opinions and comments of citizens toward certain political issues. When this occured, there will be a complete discourse of issues which can be beneficial for online media using Twitter to reformulate the issue by including people opinions and commentaries (Ausserhofer & Maireder, 2013). By this flow of information in Twitter, it could merely be said that Twitter users know who they are supporting to (by selective expossure), politicians know who they are targetting to, and media know how to reproduce certain issues which is happening. Then, Bekafigo & McBride (2013) questioned of who truly the actual political actors are. As far as they found, recent people are having opportunities to cunsume and having information of their political interest and then they have access to spread it out widely using Twitter. Until it is acknowledged that people who are most likely involved in traditional political participation have strong tendency to actively tweets about their preferred politicians (Bekafigo & McBride, 2013; Jungherr, Schoen, & Jürgens, 2016).

Gainous & Wagner (2014) tried to obtain these political information through Twitter universe during six months of The U.S. political campaign. They found out that a half of politicians have Twitter account and 45% of them used Twitter infrequently. And surprisingly, they noticed that those politicians who more active in using Twitter to attack their opponents seemed less resulting well in their election bids. To do so, Gainous & Wagner (2014) added some strategis in utilize Twitter for political campaign, such as including links of additional information and using hashtags to discuss issues.

Therefore, Chadwick in Calderaro (2014) noted there are at least three key points of the usage of social media for political interests, first, there will be increasing number of party competition. This will make a relatively new and marginalized parties can take a part during the competition. Second, social media will diffuse the power of citizens, so that there will be any grassroots movements which will have control over politicians and candidates. Politicians’ interaction to supporters will result in conducting better strategies to respond their supporters’ demand and expectations. Besides, it will become easier for politicians to create movement, collective action, informal interaction networks, shared beliefs and solidarity, and to create protest of the supporters into certain issues since they are today have strong engagement with each other (Della Porta & Diani in Rosa, 2014; Park, 2013; Romero, 2014). And the third, due to social media’s innovative potentials in reproducing campaigns, there will be required for political institution to adapt to recent information technology era.

Methods

In a social network, there are information flows and changes happen in each actor. And actors usually have relations with others within cenrtain links (van Dijk, 2006). The research used quantitative approach by measuring the degree centrality of actors which appeared during tweet mining on May 6th, 2020. Data mining is conducted of those tweets containing the term “psbb” and “#psbb” in Bahasa Indonesia by using RStudio software. Data mining resulted 5,000 tweets containing the term “psbb” and “#psbb”. Within this data, there are actors and their relations which build certain value of degree centrality, closeness centrality, betweenness centrality, and eigenvector centrality (Monge aand Contractor in Zwijze-Koning & deJong, 2015; Masrden, 2005). Besides, actor and its relations, as Wasserman & Faust (1994) had noticed, will form unique relationship which could be dyad, triad, subgroup, and group relation. Thus, data is processed and depicted by using Gephi software to put their relations into map of sociogram. The result of sociogram is then analyzed using Social Network Analysis (SNA) method to find values of centrality of the whole networks until values of centrality of the core networks.

Results And Discussions

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.

Conclusion

Networks of Nation-Wide Social Distancing (PSBB) issue on May 6th, 2020 in Twitter depicting the outer layer of issue which is popularized mostly by user FiersaBesari. However, his appearances and uniqueness in this networks are immobilized at certain point, so that there are no sign of user FiersaBesari among those who become the key actors of PSBB issue. In deeper networks, there are at least seven users who are most likely being the mediator of PSBB issue on May 6th, 2020. They are yunartowijaya, detikcom, Demokrat_TV, CNNIndonesia, FerryFe40732164, FPD_DPR, and LisaAmartatara3. In terms of each user roles in the network, data found that they are already acts and tweets appropriately such as giving commentaries to the governments, regardless the political interests of each user. Also, some of these users are already known on how to utilize social media Twitter in order to mobilize PSBB issue. Like that of Demokrat_TV and FPD_DPR which in almost all of their posts will mention something about Demokrat Party. For example, Demokrat_TV mentioned FPD_DPR and FPD_DPR mentioned Demokrat Party in their tweets.

Therefore, to sum up, in order to explore deeper into issues in certain networks, it required the ability to take concern to the core users of the networks. And, it is found that core networks of PSBB issue on May 6th, 2020, are made of users both from individual and from online news media-like institutions who share the same concerns into the recent Nation-Wide Social Distancing (PSBB) issue which is launched by the Government of Indonesia, regardless each user political interest. Thus, answering the aim of the research, PSBB issues are attracting many actors especially those who have certain political bargain position. And, the core issue of Nation-Wide Social Distancing (PSBB), in this case, tend to be layered by annecdotal terms of PSBB. This is interesting when a certain important issues are being covered by another likely issue but in different sense like that of jokes sense. However, it will require further resesearch in order to examine that evidence of layered issue.

Declarations

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank all medics and non-medics supports who are struggling in reducing the spread of Covid–19 in Indonesia and to all Twitter users who are actively monitoring the updates of CoVID–19 and who are building commentaries for better approaches in handling this pandemic. The author would also like to thank all committees of Faculty of Social and Political Science Universitas Gadjah Mada for their support to students during Nation-Wide Social Distancing (PSBB) and during CoVID–19 pandemic. And the author would also like to thank reviewers for their comments on this work.

The author report that in the preprint article found that there are certain competing interests among actors within the networks discussing Nation-Wide Social Distancing (PSBB) in Twitter in Indonesia. The competing interests are as follows:

1. Political party such as Demokrat Party tend to lead the flow of opinions on Twitter, especially users named Demokrat_TV and FPD_DPR (Demokrat Party's members in The House of Representatives). It seems that Demokrat Party is still trying to compete with recent ruler party in Indonesia, Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P). Therefore, there is a possibility in the future that Demokrat Party will playing hard for the next presidential elections of 2024-2029.

2. Online news media like detikcom and CNNIndonesia were seen to take part in the flow of opinions concerning Nation-Wide Social Distancing (PSBB) in Indonesia. Looking deeper into the ownership of media, these two online media are actually under the management of Trans Media which is owned by Chairul Tanjung, who is also well known for his ability to communicate with all political parties in Indonesia. Thus, in this case, these two online media seem having the power in order to engage with many means such as public opinions, social institutions, interest groups, and regulators.

Regulations

Government Regulation of The Republic of Indonesia Number 21 Year 2020 Concerning Nation-Wide Social Distancing (PSBB) in order to Reduce Corona Virus Disease 2019 (Covid-19).

Presidential Regulation of The Republic of Indonesia Number 7 Year 2020 Concerning Task Force in order to Reduce Corona Virus Disease 2019 (Covid-19).

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Tables

Due to technical limitations, Tables 1-3 are provided in the Supplementary Files section.