1. Newsletter — May 2015
SOCIAL MEDIA EVALUATION ON
FIRST HALF-YEAR IN THE OFFICE

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Dear Valued Clients,
Six month have passed since we, as a nation, elected a
new president, Joko Widodo, to lead and serve the
country. After the last evaluation point on the First
100 Days mark, this month we would like to present
to you an extended evaluation on Jokowi and his
government to see the development up until the First
Half-Year mark.
Within the semester, we have observed many issues
dominated the conversation topics on social media,
especially Twitter. Here we would like to see how it
impacted the perception about Jokowi as well as his
minister in Kabinet Kerja.
Similar to the last evaluation, we would not only
provide you with raw data, but also with more
indepth information on the topic discussed, sentiment
development, as well as perception indexing.
Furthermore, we also tried to compare how the
different conversational trend occur within the past six
month in order to see the different ways people
responding to variety of issues and information.
We hope to continue providing you with insightful read,
and hopefully you have a productive month ahead.
Best Regards,
Iwan Setyawan, CEO
WORDS FROM THE CEO
EDITORIAL TEAM
Board of Advisors
Iwan Setyawan, Roby Muhamad, PhD,
Shafiq Pontoh, Budhi Sumarso
Managing Editor
Smita Sjahputri
Smita.Sjahputri@provetic.com
Jl. Kerinci 1 no. 2, Kebayoran Baru
Jakarta Selatan 12120
T: +6221 72799613
F: +6221 72799613
www.provetic.com

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Last February, our Provetic Newsletter had
presented to you the analysis of social media
conversation on the elected President Joko
widodo (Jokowi) and his line of ministers; as
part of the First 100 Days evaluation of the
newly appointed nation leaders.
In the previous analysis, we utilized the social
media conversation data to provide insights
revealing the reaction of Indonesian people
toward several prominent issues surrounding
the new government. Furthermore, we also
provided data on the popularity, perception, and
significant issues of the ministers in Jokowi’s
Kabinet Kerja.
This May, Joko Widodo has finally reached the
half-way point of his first year as the President
of Indonesia. Within this period, Provetic has
gathered and evaluated the social media
conversation data to see how the opinion of
Indonesian people towards Jokowi and his line
of ministers have developed and evolved. Using
Twitter data from November 2014 up to first
two weeks of April 2015, we have managed to
identify several interesting points about people’s
perception and opinion of Jokowi and his
Kabinet Kerja’s ministers.
Consistent with our previous sentiment, we
always believe that social media conversation
data can be treated as one of the most valuable
and readily available source of information to
help identify Indonesian people’s general
reaction and sentiment toward certain issues.
Not only it would be beneficial in understanding
the mass, but it also proven to be insightful to
help indicating government success and
managing crisis.
In this current analysis on Jokowi’s first six
months in the Office, we focused our analysis on
three main points: (1) major issues that
managed to grab public’s attention and
generated various reactions; (2) general trend
on public’s perception of Jokowi; and (3)
popularity and public’s awareness on the
government’s programs —especially those
stated in Jokowi’s Nawacita.
In the second part, we would also be looking into
the popularity and conversation surrounding the
line of ministers in Jokowi’s Kabinet Kerja.
Similar to the previous analysis, we would also
present the perception index of the top ten most
popular ministers based on Twitter conversation
for approximately six months.
REACHING THE HALF-YEAR POINT:
SOCIAL MEDIA EVALUATION ON OUR LEADERS, SO FAR

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Public’s interest in Jokowi has
been steadily high, as indicated
in the conversation volume
throughout the six months,
averaging at approximately
15,000 tweets per day. However,
it is also observed that there’s no
significant conversational peak
happening in the latest three-
month period.
Peaks driven by specific
topics occurred mostly on the
first three-month period;
however some topics
continue to become massive
concerns despite the lack of
significant daily spike in
conversation level
In general, the level of Twitter
conversation regarding Jokowi
observed in the last six months
indicated that the Indonesian
public showed a great interest in
keeping close monitor on the new
president’s moves and decisions.
The most prominent issue that
generated heated response at the
beginning of Jokowi’s term was the
decision to eliminate the subsidy
plan for fuel, which resulted in
direct price increase of fuel and
indirect price increase of other
commodities. As mentioned in the
previous analysis on fuel price
increase, this decision incited a
highly polarized reaction by the
public.
On January 2015, another
prominent controversy surfaced
following the nomination of Budi
Gunawan for the position of
National Police Chief (Kapolri).
Public immediately reacted to this
news, as indicated by the
dominating top topics in the
month of January. The situation
escalated when the Corruption
Eradication Commission (KPK)
announced Budi Gunawan as
suspect in ‘fat account’ case just a
few days following the
nomination.
What happened next was what
people referred to as the “KPK vs.
Polri” scandal – which involved a
few detainments of KPK officers by
the police, which resulted in
people’s pressurizing the
president to take his stance in the
matter.
The two cases served as an
example of the different way
people responding to issues on
social media. While the fuel price
issue appeared to have elicited
extreme response from social
media users, despite the
prominent conversation spike, it
appeared that public’s reaction to
fuel price increase is relatively
short-lived.
On the other hand, the issue on

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N = 2,686,829 tweets
“KPK vs. Polri” appeared to linger
for relatively longer period of time
in the Twitter conversational
landscape.
Although the issue never reached
the same conversational peak as
the peak in conversation regarding
of fuel price, but it is observed that
the conversation managed to
withhold people’s attention and
dominated for a good several
months — indicating greater and
continuous interest from the
public.
Controversial issues are
topping the charts of most
discussed topics within
conversation about Jokowi,
which might have led to a
decline in support by the
public as expressed in Twitter
In the previous first three month
period analysis, we have observed
that there’s a decline in the
positive sentiment within the
conversation regarding Jokowi.
High optimism, indicated by 65%
positive sentiment proportion, had
been consistently declining from
the initial high on November 2014
all the way to January 2015.
As we extended time frame of the
analysis, we observed that positive
sentiment has continued to
decrease and stabilize at a low
point, during the month of
February-March 2015, coincided
with the rising of “KPK vs. Polri”
issue. No significant changes
occurred in the proportion of both
sentiment in the few months that
followed indicated that positive
Chart I — Daily Buzz and
Conversational Peak’Top
Topics on Jokowi

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sentiment has not yet bounced
back up –and most probably, so
does the general support level for
the president.
What contributed to this decline?
Other than the fuel price and “KPK
vs Polri” issues, closer look into the
other top dominating topics
during the first six month period
of Jokowi in the Office suggested
that most of them revolved around
controversial issues, such as the
capital punishment for “Bali Nine”
drugs smugglers, anti-corruption
sentiment and corruption
eradication efforts, as well as
banning of several Islamic online
media.
It is not surprising that these
highly loaded issues —be it with
humanitarian messages as well as
religious ones— elicited polarized
and heated responses.
Unfortunately, it appeared that
these issues contributed in
lowering the public support for
Jokowi, as indicated by the
increase in negative sentiment
within the conversation
throughout the first six months in
the Office.
into the top expressed public
expression about Jokowi and his
leadership so far.
Most expressed aspirations
targeted to Jokowi in social
media has been consistently
about hoping the president to
be more “Brave” and “Stern” in
all his decision and political
stance
Although expression of support for
the President is still the one of the
highest impression people
expressed on Twitter, however it
is alarming that negative
impressions such as expression of
regret to have voted for Jokowi
(indicated by the term “Salah
Pilih”) and reference to Jokowi’s
term as “Rezim Jokowi” has made it
As a comparison, conversation
regarding Jokowi’s nomination of
Budi Gunawan as the Chief of
National Police Force generated
more than 100,000 organic tweets
(excluding bots).
Meanwhile, the most popular
government program of “Tiga
Kartu Sakti”, or the Three Power
Cards as part of national welfare
program to provide free basic
healthcare and education for all
Indonesian citizen, only generated
around 15,000 organic tweets in
the past six months.
This suggested that there’s a gap
in people’s understanding and
awareness of government
programs that can be utilized to
promote the government (and the
president) in a better light among
the controversial issues.
The launching of “Tiga Kartu
Sakti” Jokowi elevated the
program in popularity;
Unfortunately, other
Nawacita programs might
have not gained any
momentum yet, so far
Apart from evaluating Jokowi as a
figure, Twitter conversation can
also be utilized in evaluating
people’s awareness of the
government programs.
Unfortunately, in the case of
Jokowi, it appears that people are
so much more interested in
discussing about controversial
cases and issues instead of
discussing about the specific
government’s programs.

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SOCIAL MEDIA CONVERSATION
IN NUMBERS
Chart IV — Development of sentiment distribution in
the conversation of Jokowi
Chart II — Top Impression from conversation about
Jokowi’s first 6 Months in the Office
Chart III— Most Popular Government Programs
(Based on Nawacita’s categorization and terms)

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highly popular especially in the
evaluation of First 100 Days in the
Office.
In the second place, Minister of
Youth and Sports Affair, Imam
Nahrawi has also risen in
popularity, especially because
Indonesian Soccer Committee
(PSSI) had been under the hot seat
of criticism after a lack of
achievement from the National
Team under PSSI. As soccer
appears to be one of the sports that
was being hold dearly by
Indonesian, public’s demand for
Imam Nahrawi to fight for the
National Team and to rule against
PSSI (one of the indicator being the
Twitter hash-tag #bekukanPSSI)
has helped to improve the minister
standing in popularity. Imam also
received one of the most positive
perception by the public.
Other than Imam Nahrawi, other
minister who also being perceived
most positively are Minister for
Acceleration Development
Backward Regions Marwan Jafar,
Minister for Religious Affair
Lukman Hakim Saifudin , and
Minister of Culture and Secondary
Education Anies Baswedan.
Marwan Jafar, with his hashtag
#MenteriDesa appeared to
embrace Twitter to promote
development issues in rural areas
— which seems to have gain good
feedback from Twitter.
Meanwhile, the Minister of Justice
and Human Rights, Yasonna Laoly
has the lowest index for positive
perception. The impact on his
ruling regarding the dispute within
political party Golkar had made
him being referred to as having
“double standard” by the people.
Chart V — Top 10 most popular
ministers from “Kabinet Kerja”
Most positively perceived
Minister
Most negatively perceived
Minister
Provetic developed a stricter
filter to gather and track data on
Jokowi’s Kabinet Kerja minister
so that the dataset only included
organic tweets (not driven by
bots/machines). We look into
collective evaluation of the
public for the cabinet ministers’
first six months in the Office and
laid out perception of the public
regarding this minister in an
index form.
Minister of Foreign Affair,
Retno Mursadi managed to
become the most popular,
followed by Minister of
Youth and Sports Affair,
Imam Nahrawi
Upon the completion of the First
Six-Month period in the Office, a
series of events had catapulted
the Minister of Foreign Affair,
Retno Mursadi into popularity.
Most specifically, issues such as
the evacuation of Indonesian in
Yemen, “Bali Nine” drug
smugglers’ death sentences and
the highly regarded event of Asian
-African Conference held in
Indonesia last month had made
Retno Mursadi the most popular
minister in Jokowi’s Kabinet Kerja.
She was surprisingly outshining
“media darling” ministers such as
Susi Pudjiastuti, Anies Baswedan,
and Ignasius Jonas —who were all

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Over the course of six month
period, conversation regarding
Jokowi as the elected President
of Indonesia has been
relentless. People have put very
close scrutiny over many of the
president moves and decision
—almost readily reactive to any
controversial issues that might
arise.
However, looking at the
conversational trend and the
top topics analysis, it is
indicative that people were
more interested in discussing
about loaded issues and more
general decision made by both
the president or the
government, instead of
evaluating the specific
programs of the government.
Among a few popular Nawacita
and governmental programs
that made Jokowi’s campaign
material, it appears that only
the “Tiga Kartu Sakti” program
launch that receive some
attention from the public.
Apart from the “Tiga Kartu
Sakti”, only the catchphrase
“Revolusi Mental” as well as the
“Kabinet Kerja” that was being
regularly referred to by the
public.
This provide an opportunity for
both the presidential team as
well as other government
official to fill in the gap within
the public awareness of the
current implementation of
government programs to
present the government in
better light —instead of
responding to other
controversial issues (which
might always arise, inevitably).
This move might be a good
approach since we observed
that the continuous discussions
over controversial and loaded
issues, such as the capital
punishment, “KPK vs. Polri”, as
well as other issues that might
have touched the sensitive
areas of religion in Indonesia;
might have led to lowered
Positive sentiment in the
conversation regarding Jokowi
—which might be translated as
lowered support or
sympathetic sentiment.
However, although promoting
government programs might be
a good short-term fix for public
relation; we believe that Jokowi
and his ministers had to
improve many ways aspects of
the Indonesian lives in order to
gain back the support and
optimism expressed by the
public in the beginning of the
term.
By responding to the common
themes of people concerns —
fuel supply, corruption
eradication and law
enforcement, and economic
stability— and matching it with
appropriate program on the
list, government can help the
public to see how they address
the public’s most pressing issue
and improve their welfare on
daily basis.
KEY TAKEAWAYS AND
FURTHER IMPLICATIONS
© May 2015 — Provetic
Photo Credits:
Cover Photo by Wikipedia
1. “Dukung KPK” by Tempo
2. by US Embassy State Dept./Erik A. Kurniawan
All rights under Creative Commons Liscense