Newsletter — November 2014
SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYSIS ON
INDONESIAN PUBLIC CONCERNS

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Dear Valued Clients,
As a data-driven strategic consulting company,
Provetic have always strived to practice our
belief in turning data into valuable insights and
help our clients to navigate the dynamic realm
of Indonesian society. Coming into our second
year of practice, we continue to search for better
ways to utilize data and bring forward insightful
information about the Indonesian people.
Today, we would like to introduce our freshly
published monthly Newsletter. With this
Newsletter, we hope to deliver data analysis and
some insights about several topics that maybe
of interest to our clients. This month, we are
starting with the discussion about Indonesian
Public Concerns.
We believe that by understanding what
Indonesian people are most concerned about,
this information will help government and
policy makers as well as businesses and
organizations to address those issues and
provide solutions that will benefit the whole
society.
We hope you will enjoy reading through this
issue and we look forward to deliver you more
insights in the months to come.
Best Regards,
Iwan Setyawan, CEO
WORDS FROM THE CEO
EDITORIAL TEAM
Board of Advisors
Iwan Setyawan, Roby Muhamad,
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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The year 2014 has been very important for
Indonesia as a nation. As Susilo Bambang
Yudhoyono ends his presidential term this year,
Indonesians are gearing up to welcome a new
era under the leadership of newly elected
President Joko Widodo.
Social media, especially Twitter, has been
playing a major role as medium for information
exchange, as well as a public opinion platform
during the crucial political campaign period. The
growing importance of the social media as well
as Indonesian's attachment to it is reflected in
the whopping amount of more than one hundred
and sixty million tweets being posted regarding
the legislative and presidential elections up until
this day. Twitter and Facebook were even
dubbed as the new battlefield of political
campaigns and communications.
With internet users in Indonesia predicted to
reach 139 million users in 2015*, Indonesia is
listed as one of the top five countries in the
world with the most number of Twitter users.
It's only natural that businesses and
organization as well as political figures and
government officials want to tap into this ever-
growing communications channel.
Social media is not limited in its uses and
purposes. As the new frontier of two-way
communication medium, social media not only
gives access for information providers to reach
their intended audience, but also as a means to
gain feedback directly from the people.
Moreover, as the world goes digital at an
increasingly rapid speed, it appears that more
Indonesians are also doing the same thing.
In the case of Twitter, not only does it provide a
quick and direct access to reach the public, its
data can also provide us with insightful
information about individual and collective
social behaviors, feelings, and opinions about
various issues, in real-time.
We have seen how much Twitter data was able
to give valuable information on voters’ behavior
during the legislative and presidential campaign
periods. In previous analyses, Provetic
discovered that popularity on Twitter correlates
highly with election result in the last governor
elections in West Java, East Java, and Jakarta.
But with the election coming to its end,
especially in the light of welcoming the new era
under a new presidential leadership, let's look
into another topic that we believe is useful both
for governance as well as business enterprises:
Public Concerns.
“READING” THE MIND OF INDONESIAN PEOPLE:
SOCIAL MEDIA CONVERSATION AND PUBLIC CONCERNS

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 Issues regarding Public Welfare, such as fuel
prices, government subsidies, electricity
supply, and wages are topping the list of the
most discussed Public Concerns.
 Other issues that are largely discussed
concerned more of the urban dweller
problem of Transportation issues, especially
traffic jams.
 Attention also appears to be directed to
issues with large media coverage, such as
Corruption Cases by political figures.
 Interestingly, issues that are more complex
and have relatively less direct consequences
like Education and Health Services issues, are
apparently being discussed less.
 In short, people are responding to issues that
have direct consequences to the everyday
lives, incite more polarized opinions, as well
as the heavily covered by the media.
 People mainly use Twitter as means to
express their worry, hopes, and frustrations
as well as to gain information regarding
specific issues. However, they also use it to
communicate their concerns to the country
leaders or the authorities.
 This data can be used to understand the
priorities that people put on issues around
the lives of Indonesians.
 The lack of discussion regarding certain
important issues such as Education and
Health Services might indicate the need for
further educating the public on the issues.
 Furthermore, by closely following the
conversation about these issues, it can
provide insights about the opportunity to
measure the relative impact of interventions
and the dissemination of topics within issues
that can hold power and engage the people.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

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The questions of “what is in
people’s mind?” or “what are the
main concerns of the public?”
have always been interesting to
ask and even more interesting to
answer. In the past two months,
Provetic has taken the liberty of
tracking and analyzing Twitter
conversations, amounting to a
collection of almost four
thousands of tweets, on issues
that we believe to be the main
concern of the Indonesian public.
Public welfare is at the top Breaking down the issues,
specific topics in the mind of
Indonesians
Chart I —
Summary of Issues
Share in Public
Concern
Conversation on
Twitter
As we dig deeper into the top
three issues of Public Welfare,
Corruption and Frauds, and
Transportation; we found one
specific topic that dominates the
respective issues at hand (see
Chart II). More than half of Public
Welfare conversation revolves
around the discussion of fuel
prices, especially on the
speculation and worry about the
price increase, government
subsidies on fuels, and stock issues
(i.e. shortage, distribution). As we
look into the accounts being
mentioned most within this
conversation, news media
accounts such as @detikcom,
@metro_tv, and @kompascom are
on the top of the most mentioned
users list. When people are not
responding to media coverage, it
seems that they are also using
Twitter to reach out to the country
leaders, with @sbyudhoyono and
@jokowi_do2 are among
Public welfare issues top the list
composing more than one third of
Twitter conversations. They
include fuel prices, government
subsidies, electricity supply, and
wages.
Coming in the second is the
discussion of corruption and
fraud cases which have been
covered widely by the media
lately. In the third and fourth
place, with almost the same
amount of weight, are the
Transportation issues such as
traffic jams and the Economic
Issues such as banking and
commodity prices.
Interestingly, conversations that
revolve around the specific issues
of Health Services and Education
only have very little shares in the
whole Public Concern data, which
may indicate that this might not
be of Indonesian public main
concern, they are not very
popular or do not seem to incite
polarizing opinions.

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the top most mentioned.
Conversation on on Corruption
Cases mainly scrutinize and
discuss current major cases being
handled by the Corruption
Eradication Committee (KPK),
especially regarding the
corruption case of Partai
Demokrat’s politician Anas
Urbaningrum, Former Minister
Jero Wacik, and Riau’s governor
Anaas Maamun. Other than
cheering for KPK’s successes in
capturing and bringing the
corruptors to justice, some people
also took it to Twitter to voice out
their hopes that under Joko
Looking at the time of
conversation peaks also indicates
that complaints about traffic jams
occur during the commuting hours
(7-8 AM and 5-6 PM).
It also appears that people using
Twitter to address this problem
directly to the public officials, by
tweeting their complaints and
reports directly to Jakarta’s Traffic
Police account @TMCPoldaMetro,
as well as using it to search for
information of traffic conditions
and alternative routes by tweeting
to accounts providing such
information such as
@radioelshinta and @lewatmana.
Widodo’s leadership, the
government officials could be fully
eradicated.
Within the conversation of
Transportation issues, it appears
that the main concern revolves
around the more urban problems
of traffic in big cities, with tweets
coming from people residing in
Jabodetabek and Banten
dominating the conversation. Top
words being circulated, such as
“Stuck” and “Macet”, reflected the
major complaints and the still
unresolved problem that most
frustrated commuters still have to
face everyday.
Chart II — Specific Topic Shares on the Top Topics of Public Concerns

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One of the surprising findings
within this data analysis is that
discussion about health services
and educational issues appear to
have very little share within the
conversation. Does it mean that
these two topics are not the main
concern of the Indonesian
people?
Health and Educational Issues:
Not on People’s Minds?
The underwhelming cumulative 4%
share of conversation for both
issues might indicate two things,
based on our best knowledge.
Either that the demographic of
Twitter users are skewed towards
the working class and urban
dwellers might come into play in
contributing to the low amount of
the conversation, or that these
issues are just not as popular as the
rest of the issues. Less media
coverage, more complex problems,
and requirement for more in-depth
discussion might also play their
parts in making these issues
become less discussed on Twitter.
As we look deeper into the
conversation of both issues, the
main concern that the Indonesian
people voiced out on Twitter are
mainly poor services and the
expensive prices for both
Educational and Health services.
Especially in the conversation
regarding Health Services, the poor
but costly services are the top main
complaints, while conversation
regarding government’s health
programs such Jaminan Kesehatan
Negara (i.e. BPJS, JKN) only takes
up very miniscule portion of
people's conversation, indicating
lower awareness of such
programs. Meanwhile in the
discussion of the Educational
issues, basic education topics
dominate over higher education,
indicating that most people seem
to be more concerned about
fundamental and elementary type
of education, perhaps as a
reflection of the still lower access
to higher education.
Other explanation is that the
nature of the issues which are of
long-term consequences instead of
a short-term ones, which might
contribute to people assessing it as
lesser priority.
Alternatively, the low composition
of Health and Educational issues
discussed over Twitter maybe
related to the phenomena of
negative information bias. People
are more psychologically engaged
over negative experiences than
positive ones, therefore tending to
converse about problematic issues
and those generate polarizing
opinions. The lack of
conversations of Health and
Educational issues may indicate
than things are “better” if not
comparatively neutral and
therefore people are less troubled
and conflicted over these services
than they are concerning issues
over Public Welfare, Corruption
Cases and Traffic. The lower
engagement also indicate that
these issues maybe
characteristically less polarizing,
suggesting that most Indonesians
may agree or hold a neutral stance
over most educational and health
issues. The lower engagement over
health programs may mean that
people do not feel them to be
problematic, even perhaps, are
successfully implemented.

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We believe that this data has
provided some important
insights into what are the main
concerns that Indonesian
people have. Expectedly, issues
that have always been popular
under the Public Welfare issues
on fuels prices, government
subsidy plans, and electricity
supply are also reflected in
people’s daily conversations on
Twitter. Apart from this, other
issues that also has direct and
recurring impact on people’s
lives such as Transportation
issues, mainly complaints about
traffic jams, also dominate the
discussion on Twittersphere.
But that does not mean that
people are not voicing concern
about larger and more pressing
issues such as Corruption cases
and Economic issues.
The weight and shares of the
specific issues within the whole
might indicate the priority and
conversation on Public Concern
level of importance that people
bring into the respective topics,
which can be used as a guideline
in what to address first by the
authority as well as by
businesses and organizations.
The less discussed issues, such
as Health and Educatonal
Services, are by no means of a
lesser importance, as it might be
due to lower level awareness
and less direct impact, or
alternately, indicate
comparatively less conflicting
state of these issues compared to
those that dominate Twitter
conversations. The nature of the
issues which consequences is
more of long-term impact
instead of short-term might
indicate how Indonesian still
have the knowledge gap
regarding issues that would
benefit them in a long-term.
Hence, we believe that this
provide an opportunity for
further educating the public on
the issues.
We believe that these insights
can provide opportunities to
measure the relative impact of
interventions over related
issues and the dissemination of
topics within issues that can
hold power and engage the
people.
Furthermore by looking at the
various ways that people use
Twitter in addressing their
main concerns, reports on their
thoughts and feelings can be
used to give feedback
authorities, as well as gathering
and responding to information
provided by media and other
sources; We believe that the
growing importance of utilizing
this social media channel should
be taken more seriously both by
the government as well by the
public sector.
KEY TAKEAWAYS AND
FURTHER IMPLICATIONS
© November 2014 — Provetic
Photo Credits:
Cover Photo by Sebastiaan ter Burg
1. “Along The Canal (Indonesia)” by Ahron de Leeuw
2. “Macet” by Basibanget
3. “Rain, Gas Station and Dawn” by Riza Nugraha
4. “Curious Local” by Danumurthi Mahendra
All rights under Creative Commons Liscense