Negative Campaigning in Indonesia's Digital Era Elections

Abstract

Negative campaigning can inform voters and ensure accountability, but it can also foster voter cynicism, divert attention from meaningful policy debates, and increase political polarization. In the digital era, negative campaigns have shifted from fostering informed discussion to employing manipulative tactics by focusing on the candidate's character, particularly issues of identity that have not been systematically investigated in Indonesian context. This thesis explores negative campaigning in the digital era in Indonesia marking the new wave of digital political communication by looking at its mechanics, actors, key narratives, and effects. To this end, the study analyses three elections: the 2019 presidential election, the 2022 mayoral election in Medan in Sumatra, and the 2022 mayoral election in South Tangerang in Java. Fieldwork for this thesis included conducting over two years of semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders, such as politicians and social media campaigners. In addition, content analysis was carried out on social media and other online media, as well as orchestrating various other surveys.

The findings reveal that digital media has transformed the nature and professional practice of negative campaigning. Campaign actors, such as influencers and buzzers, operate covertly on various social media platforms, employing bots, automation, and anonymity to amplify messages, ranging from legitimate criticisms to slander and disinformation using computational propaganda. Key to this study is the identification of various negative campaign narratives, such as portraying opponents as disobedient to Islam, subservient to foreign interests, lacking integrity, or being associated with the Indonesian Communist Party. This thesis also highlights the impact of negative campaigning on voters, showing a feasible decrease in support for the targeted candidate. My key theoretical contribution to the literature lies in the cross-disciplinary integration of communication and politics in theories, methodologies, and argumentation, which significantly enriches the field of political communication research in recent time. My thesis found that negative campaigning is primarily dominated by character attacks that exploit the identity issues of candidates, rather than focusing on policies. The findings of this first systematic study with extensive case details in Indonesia enhance the understanding of computational propaganda in the world's fourth-largest democracy and highlight the need to mitigate their adverse effects. The findings also indicate the emergence of digital negative campaigning which is different from the old conception at the mass media era.