Ganjar Pranowo, Anies Baswedan, Prabowo Subianto Popular Among Generation Z: Songsong For The 2024 Presidential Election, Campaigns On Social Media Must Be Stronger

Ganjar Pranowo, the most active in social media, making him the most popular politician among Generation Z. (Photo: Antara)

JAKARTA - Hootsuite's 2022 social trends report shows that current Generation Z citizens prefer information from social media and have an interest in visual and video content that are the original characters of Generation Z. This generation is humans who were born in the period 1996-2012.

Based on data from the Central Statistics Agency (BPS), 27.7 percent of Indonesia's population is Generation Z and 25.9 percent are millennials, which totals 270.2 million people.

Ahead of the 2024 election, social media is considered a powerful weapon to get young voters. A number of figures and politicians have begun to actively use social media as a communication bridge with the public, especially young voters.

Social media illustration. (Photo: Pixabay/Lobo Studio Hamburg)

Quoted from the Al Azhar Indonesia page, political observer at Al Azhar University Indonesia, DR. Ujang Komaruddin, said that if politicians want to attract novice voters, the majority of whom come from the Millennial Generation and Generation Z, then an approach through social media must be taken.

“The presidential and vice presidential candidates carry out modern, current and conventional strategies. Conventional was by land to pick up the voices of the traditional circles, the old. If the approach to Generation Z is approached through the air, through the media, especially social media,"

"Therefore, the presidential and vice-presidential candidates need to activate their media channels to gain sympathy from the millennials. Publish their achievements, performance, and so on through these social media channels," he said.

Most Popular People on Social Media

From the Talkwalker application, netizens' interactions with popular national figures are monitored. They are Ganjar Pranowo who has 4.4 million followers on Instagram, Anies Baswedan 5.4 million followers, and Prabowo Subianto who has 4.5 million followers on Twitter.

Ganjar's name appears on social media more than Anies and Prabowo during 8-12 February 2022. From the search results and citizen conversations on social media. There are 32.8 thousand searches about Ganjar on social media involving 256.4 thousand interactions from netizens. While in the same period.

Anies with 10.8 thousand searches and 86.2 interactions, while Prabowo with 11.2 thousand searches with 61.2 thousand citizen interactions.

Anies Baswedan, the second most popular in the world of social media. (Photo: Antara)

In the period 11-19 February 2022, this trend still continues, netizens interact with Ganjar more than Anies and Prabowo. From the 21.5 thousand search results for the figure of Ganjar, it resulted in 170 thousand citizen interactions. This interaction is still higher than Anies (127.9 thousand) and Prabowo (68.1 thousand).

From the results of monitoring through 10 main conversations (Top conversations), the interactions that arise around Ganjar are more dominated by the issue of the Wadas conflict. The hashtags #WadasMelawan, #FaktaWadas, #WadasTolakTambang, which always appear in searches and conversations about Ganjar. In general, it can be concluded that Ganjar is considered less in favor of the Wadas residents.

However, in the next period, the negative sentiment decreased from 37 percent to 7 percent, as Ganjar tried to approach the Wadas village community.

Anies received a more positive sentiment the following week, one of the reasons was the emergence of Anies' content as the top presidential candidate based on the SMRC survey. Content uploaded on February 15, 2022 by Twitter account @Mdy_asmara 1701 which has 88.2 thousand followers. The content, which has always seemed to support Anies, has received 429 retweets and 2.9 thousand Twitter likes.

Other content came from the Youtube account of the Millennial Fighters which reported that the Formula E project was running smoothly which supported positive conversations for Anies.

Prabowo Subianto, his popularity was boosted by the purchase of 42 Rafale fighter jets from France. (Photo: Antara)

Although in the last two weeks of February, Prabowo's figure had minimal searches and conversations compared to Ganjar and Anies, but Prabowo's content discussion was more stable in positive sentiment. Even the conversations throughout February 11-19 2022 were even more positive. Content about Prabowo is largely supported by the purchase of 42 Rafale advanced fighter jets from France

Prabowo's policy as Minister of Defense was welcomed by netizens' interactions on social media. Apart from the addition of positive sentiment, this appreciation can also be seen from the increase in the number of interactions with Prabowo's content from 61.2 thousand to 68.8 thousand interactions, even on February 11, 2022 at 15.00 WIB with 1.2 thousand interactions, momentum shortly after the jet purchase contract. Rafale fighter.

From interaction monitoring, it shows that 55 percent of netizens who interact with Prabowo's content are women, more than Anies 29 percent and Ganjar 27 percent, and as many as 70 percent of netizens who follow Prabowo's content are 18-14 years old or are in the Z generation group.

It is undeniable that Generation Z currently interacts a lot with social media, that's why it is necessary for political figures such as Ganjar Pranowo, Anies Baswedan, and Prabowo Subianto to always greet them with content that is appropriate for the age of the netizens. Through solutive content in attractive packaging, quality conversations and not being a provocation medium to spread hoax news.