“Social Media Capabilities in Predicting Regional Head Election Results”

PRLog (Press Release) - Jul. 24, 2012 - On July 13, 2012, PoliticaWave.Com held a press conference in Jakarta about "Social Media Monitoring Capabilities in Predicting Election Result in Jakarta”,  inviting three speakers, Yose Rizal (Director of PoliticaWave.Com), Arif Zulkifli (Senior Journalist from Tempo Media Group), and Jaleswari Pramodhawardhani (Political Researcher from the The Indonesian Institute of Sciences).

PoliticaWave.Com is a social media monitoring site focusing on political conversations in Indonesian social media channels, such as Twitter, Facebook, blogs, online forums, online news and YouTube — during the gubernatorial election
The online service was launched in May 1, 2012 by two companies, MediaWave Indonesia and Tridaya Nusantara and currently focuses on the Jakarta gubernatorial election.

Through its real-time analytics, PoliticaWave.Com was able to predict the outcome of the Jakarta gubernatorial election several days before the quick counts results were announced on Wednesday, July 11, 2012 by the leading Indonesian Survey Institute, LSI (Lembaga Survey Indonesia). The results were also convergent with quick counts of other major survey institutions.

Joko Widodo and his running mate Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama is at the top of the list which are discussed in the social media with 499,812 buzzes and 149,812 unique users. The next on the list is incumbent Fauzi Bowo and Nachrowi Ramli with 494,009 buzzes and 164,223 unique users.

In terms of the sentiment index, Joko Widodo and Fauzi Bowo’s positions were radically different. Joko Widodo steadily stayed on the positive side of the sentiment index while Fauzi Bowo was on the opposite side during the two months of monitoring by PoliticaWave.Com. The sentiment index estimates the number of negative and positive conversation of social media users, which is also strongly related to electability.

“Social media is used by middle class people whose numbers might be not as large as the lower class but are quite significant,” said PoliticaWave.Com Director Yose Rizal. “They are middle class people who are smart, critical, pro-change and fed up with the current administration,” adds Arif Zulkifli, a senior journalist from Tempo Media Group. In utilizing social media, Arif said that the way of spreading the information was also important.

This phenomenon uncovered by PoliticaWave.Com indicates that social media can be a reflection of the voices of Indonesians, particularly in the major cities.
Indonesia has 40 million of Facebook users and 20 million Twitter users who mostly reside in major cities throughout the archipelago.

PoliticaWave.Com
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Email: info@politicawave.com