Political Branding in Indonesia as a Simulacrum

The next speaker in this COMNEWS 2023 session is Ivan Taufiq, whose interest is in political branding on social media. Political uses of social media involve the display of personal identity, reputation management, branding, and perception control; this creates a hyperreality in the Baudrillardian sense, and means that political social media activities are simulacra that may or may not represent the actual personalities of the politicians involved.

This paper focusses on political branding ahead of the 2024 presidential election in Indonesia, focussing on the presidential candidate Ganjar Pranowo; a hashtag related to him, #ganjarpresiden2024, has emerged as the most prominent in the lead-up to the election so far. Personal branding here is about defining the person, defining what they do, building the personal style, and creating the signs and symbols that followers can then also engage with and amplify. The #ganjarpresiden2024 hashtag that such activities promote thus becomes a simulacrum that represents a social imaginary of Ganjar rather than the actual person; users inscribe it with their own hopes and ideas, well beyond the activities of the candidate himself.

Some of the accounts engaged in this are themselves gathering very large followings, and present a very positive sentiment towards the candidate; this is again a simulacrum that may not accurately represent actual public opinion towards the the candidate. The personal branding of the candidate thus becomes collaborative, and is no longer controlled entirely by the campaign itself.