Reading the “SRI Party Maneuver for
Elections” in Jakarta Post on Monday, 01/09/2012, it tickles me to explore
deeper on why SRI Party, which failed to pass the “verification” test at the
Law and Human Rights Ministry, still “on fire” (no better words to express this
except in Sundanesse: keukeuh) to
shot more maneuvers for 2014 Presidential Election in my beloved country:
Indonesia.
What can we celebrate through their
effort and “why on earth” this is an intriguing indication of democratic
participation in Indonesia?
Let me track back, what so unique
about the development of SRI Party briefly. The Facebook Group "We believe in the Integrity
of Sri Mulyani Indrawati" reached over 131,000 members in only one month.
This number of people is only 0.3% of Facebook users population in Indonesia or only
0.05% of total population in Indonesia. However, this public support reached more than
100.429 members in just a month according to Detik.com (Wednesday, 24/02/10).
This Facebook group became a public advocacy from the members to Sri Mulyani as
an individual in political problem.
The group support continued
further by building the social movement of SMI Keadilan
(Solidaritas Masyarakat Indonesia untuk Keadilan) or SMI Justice (Solidarity of
Indonesian Society for Justice). It is also the abbreviation of the inspired
figure of this movement, Sri Mulyani Indrawati (SMI). The social movement uses social media mainly to mobilize their activities in
every province.
The next phase after Facebook group in provincial-based was
they have the intention to build political party. The objective is to support their inspired figure to enter the
presidential candidacy in 2014. The development of SRI Party demonstrated the promising
prediction on the power of Social Media to offer wider opportunity in
participatory democracy. Wooley (2010) argued that Facebook could be used to counter dominant discourses. At that time,
the dominant discourse is on the negative judgment to Sri Mulyani in regards to
her responsibility in giving bail out to Century Bank. The Facebook group offer
alternative perspective upon that issue, by supporting Sri Mulyani.
Tanis and Postmes
(2003) also mentioned that Facebook groups enable individuals to present the wide variety of information about
their provision or displeasure for a cause, issue,
or candidate. Norris (2003) mentioned it as ‘interactive linkage between
citizens’. Here, Facebook members can express their opinion about the issue of
Sri Mulyani and other political concerns, they even can create their own
individual production and engage in political discourse in creative and free
way.
Even though, SRI Party is still new; however, it goes to further question on Earl and Shussman
(2003) point of view on the ‘members’ convert to ‘users’, that people tend to disengage after the action they support in digital media
develop further. The enthusiasm of membership who want to join the party need
longer time to be gained members in Facebook, especially when we compare with
the beginning of this movement in “We believe in the Integrity of Sri Mulyani
Indrawati” Facebook Group. This situation challenges the commitment of members, since
virtual members have weak-tie bonding (Kavanaugh et al, 2005). Thus, the commitment of virtual supporter cannot guarantee the
“real” support (Loader, 2010; Diani 2000; Clark & Themudo 2003) in Sri
Party. So, for supporters of Sri Mulyani, I suggest to go to the “field” and
search for “real” member and not only concentrating on “online members.
Cheers!
“HOT” IDEAS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH:
a.
Research
in quantitative content analysis on the categories of political Facebook
conversation
b.
Exploring
the idea of citizenship through Facebook especially in political campaign,
through discourse analysis or qualitative research
c.
Examining
the motivation of Facebook members to engage in politic and how do they communicate
through Facebook
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