Tweeting Populism in the 2019 Indonesian Presidential Election Candidate

Abstract

Tweeting the populism of two candidates: Joko Widodo and Prabowo was part of an important discourse in the 2019 presidential election. The gap was as previous studies have argued the general characteristics of each candidate's populism, they have not examined twitter discourse deeply under the populism discourse analysis of each candidate. This article filled the gap by analyzing the twitter discourse of the two candidates in the 2019 presidential election, Joko Widodo and Prabowo Subianto, as the articulation of the populism rhetoric. Working with Laclau's discourse analysis strategy, this study has uncovered the main discourse by revealing the buzzwords of each account: @jokowi and @prabowo. The results of this study suggest that there are some differences nodal points between the populism discourse of the two candidates. Jokowi articulated populism of nationalist identity with his buzzwords of "Indonesia" and some of his flagship programs, while Prabowo buzzed about the Muslim identity and critics to the election process. Jokowi conveyed more optimism about the success of infrastructure development, land certification, and village fund programs. On the other hand, Prabowo was more concerned about Muslim identity with buzzwords "semoga"/ "hopefully" and "Allah" during his campaign sessions. The other buzzwords were focused on critics regarding the presidential election that has been "tainted by compradors" with "TPS/ polling place" as the buzzwords.