TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - A recent research conducted by Prapancha Research shows that political differences ahead of the 2014 Presidential Election has created a tense condition in social media.
It also says that quite a few people have broken up their friendship in the social media since they feel 'disturbed' by rows over different political views, while some others feel uncomfortable for their pages are littered with political campaigns.
"We did not receive the exact number of cases of unfriending or unfollowing, but there’s a significant increase of talks about unfriend ahead of the election," said researcher at Prapancha Research, Adi Ahdiat, in a press release received by Tempo yesterday.
Prapancha Research is a research organization aimed at inspiring Indonesian youth to care more about the country. The foundation itself has observed social media activities between June 4 -July 4.
The result shows that they discovered talks about unfriending, unfollowing, blocking, and unsharing on social media related to the election have increased by around 3,513 cases on Twitter.
In fact, before the election, talks about unfriending or unfollowing on social media were not found.
One of the tweets that talks unfollowing on Twitter is the one owned by @imasnuriah who tweeted: "Wadooow kacau baca twit pada saling hina gegara pemilu. Wajib unfollow yang bahasanya kasar." (Unbelievable. There are many tweets that contain insults due to the election. Guess I must unfollow the accounts that contain bad language).
Another developing trend is temporary unfollow or unfriend and after the election, some of those accounts owners said they would add friend or follow the accounts they have unfriended or blocked.
"The election is getting closer and there are more and smear campaigns. I’ll unfollow those accounts first. After the election, I’ll follow them again," tweeted @hadi_siders.
According to Adi, this tendency shows that reckless campaigns in the social media are in fact counterproductive to the image of the candidate in question.
"We often think that candidates who can win votes in the social media can also win votes in the real life but this perception is misleading. It will be futile if in people’s timelines are littered with exaggerated campaigns or libelous news that cause antipathy," Adi said.
AMIRULLAH
