Legislative Candidates Rely on Big Data for Campaign

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JAKARTA, KOMPAS -- An increasing number of legislative candidates and political parties are relying on big data in their campaign strategy. Increasing popularity is the ultimate goal of social media campaigns.

A number of political parties and legislative candidates are relying on big data sourced from social media, among other sources, in their digital campaigns. Despite lacking data on its effectiveness in Indonesia, digital campaign is believed to be much cheaper than conventional campaign, which often requires a huge amount of campaign props.

The Golkar Party says that it is serious in using big data on its campaign. The party processes and analyses available data to compile its campaign strategy and create specifically-targeted contents to be disseminated online.

The party’s central board started doing this in May last year, to promote a more contemporary image of the party. In October, the method was introduced to Golkar Party legislative candidates and was implemented massively.

The party’s deputy coordinator of special campaigns, Rizal Mallarangeng, told Kompas on Tuesday (29/1/2019) that the party’s central board paid for all purchases and processing of digital data and campaign content creation.

Under Rizal’s coordination, the party’s digital team has hundreds of members. Currently, the party facilitates the digital campaigns of at least two legislative candidates in each constituency (dapil) across all levels of legislative bodies.

Behavioral change

The Golkar Party obtains its digital data from social media websites, such as Facebook. It mostly uses Facebook and Instagram in its digital campaigns. “We can influence [voters’] behavioral change through Facebook and Instagram. On Twitter, the influence is not that big,” Rizal said.

Despite no assurance of its effectiveness, Rizal said that digital campaigns based on big data had good potentials. He said that Golkar had seen an increasing number of millennial supporters since it launched its digital campaign in 2018. Millennial voters use social media intensively and account for almost 50 percent of the 192.8 million voters in the 2019 election.

“This is new and it may not be an instant success. However, if we can use technology effectively, we believe that we will get strong results,” Rizal said.

House speaker Bambang Soesatyo, who will seek reelection from Central Java X constituency in 2019, shared Rizal’s optimism. The constituency, comprising Kebumen, Purbalingga and Banjarnegara, has around 1.8 voters who are active on social media. Bambang said that he purchased raw data of Facebook and Instagram users in his constituency for Rp 20 million (US$1,419.7) from a data processing consultant service.

From the data available on the two social media services, Bambang said that he could map out his potential electability specifically in his constituency. He can learn about social media users’ political preference, voting history and trivial matters such as media consumption, hobbies, social media activities and house and car ownership.

From this mapping, he can compile specific strategies to approach voters, who may get specific campaign messages through text, Whatsapp messages or campaign advertisements in Facebook or Instagram. “I spent a lot less time and money than if I do door-to-door campaigns or mass mobilizations,” he said.

To increase his campaign’s effectiveness, Bambang combines his digital campaigns with a conventional one. He uses big data profiling to increase the effectiveness of his messages during face-to-face campaigns with potential voters in his constituency.

“Big data potentials in Indonesia is not being used optimally, despite whoever is able to harness it will excel in any field. Available data can be processed and turned into weapons to win various competitions, including political ones,” he said.

Cheaper

Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) House member candidate from Jakarta II constituency, Hidayat Nur Wahid, said that digital campaigns could significantly reduce political cost. The cost of purchasing and processing data from social media is less than that of making and installing a huge amount of campaign props.

Hidayat said that he did not purchase all of his raw data. He obtained some of the data for free due to his closeness to several survey agencies or research experts in several universities.

“PKS has its own research team and we sometimes conduct researches and process the data of our voters in our constituencies,” he said.

PKS House member candidate from West Java I constituency, Ledia Hanifa, said that she had bought Facebook ads in the past six months to build rapports with potential voters.

Ledia said that one ad cost her around Rp 10,000 a day. In the past six months, Ledia has purchased six or seven ads, each of which is displayed for around 10 days.

Apart from the cheaper cost, Ledia said that the ads could be targeted towards specific people, based on age, location or gender. To increase her ads’ effectiveness, Ledia creates a variety of contents in line with the voters’ segments that she targets.

Despite using digital data in his campaign, Hidayat said that he still prioritized conventional campaigns, such face-to-face meetings in potential voters’ homes. He believed that conventional campaigns were still the most effective in Indonesia. “Most importantly, we need to meet directly with the people. Despite the emergence of big data, we only use it to confirm and sharpen our findings,” he said.

Popularity

Komunikonten executive director Hariqo Wibawa said that increasing popularity was often the main goal of legislative candidates’ use of social media campaigns. Not many legislative candidates are adept at using social media to interact with voters, find out what concerns them and then offer solutions. “Legislative candidates often ask how to increase their popularity in social media and how to manage social media,” Hariqo said.

Consequently, many legislative candidates treat their social media pages like physical locations in the real world and flood them with campaign contents and props.

This is visible in the Facebook and Instagram pages of many candidates seeking election in 2019. Many of the contents are photographs, information on the candidates’ registration number, constituency, political party affiliation and activities.

Only a handful of the candidates are actually uploading contents with certain narratives and giving the public the opportunity to interact with them.

Bandung Fe Institute researcher Hokky Situngkir said that the important thing that is often forgotten in the dissemination of political contents on social media is the question of how digital popularity can influence voters’ political preference.

“Just how large is the influence of [becoming] a trending topic to influencing voters’ political preference?” he said, adding that there had yet to be any study on the topic. (AGE/SPW/INK)

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