New media and nationalism in Indonesia: an analysis of discursive nationalism in online news and social media after the 2019 Indonesian presidential election

Abstract

Nationalism is an issue that is often contested in a political rally in various countries. Nationalism is generally used to describe two phenomena: first, the attitude of members of the nation when they care about their national identity. Second, it can be defined as any action performed by members of the nation to sustain their self-determination or political sovereignty. In the era of conventional media, nationalism was created from the dynamics of physical interaction, human to human. However, in the new media era, nationalism has turned into "human to technology to human". This leads to a dynamic that never happened before. To capture this, online news and social media data were captured using the SNA (Social Network Analysis) method, in collaboration with astramaya.id that saw 19 online news items listed. Data were also collected from Facebook (3,376 mentions), Instagram (3,417 mentions), Twitter (160,432 mentions), and YouTube (1,699 mentions). The time frame, July 2019 to July 2020, takes into account the high level of discussion on nationalism after the presidential election and Covid-19. This research found that: first, Indonesia’s Nationalism has divided into two caps; second, a non-human social media account gives a significant contribution to these cleavages; third, primordial sentiments take determining effect for every actor in generating cleavage.