VIRTUAL POLITICS: A NEW BRIDGE TOWARDS THE ELECTION OF THE 2019 ELECTION

Abstract

The development of life in this millenial era make a lot difference and changes. These also applied to the two things which will be impact on one big event: communication and politics toward Elections 2019. As a result, the conventional political communication system (campaign in the public) what is usually done by presidential candidates start shifting to the new ‘bridge’, that is virtual political communication. The research aims to give a picture about how social media could be a new political communication media in Indonesian political development. The discussion in this article including the function and the role of social media in communicating the presidential candidates’ vision and mission to the public’s mindset also the pattern of public communication as the implementation of political communication in the cyberspace. These findings interpreted inward a vitual political commmunication network which is more flexible in interpret and respond back the presidential candidates’ vision and mission ahead of the Election2019.The study using qualitative method with combining between agenda setting theory with the empathy and homophily theory as the research analysis techniques. These combined theories are needed in analyzing the interraction pattern, both from presidential candidates to the publics and vice versa in the same political situation. The result of this study shows that the two-way communication modelis formed between the presidential candidates and the public through the social mediaoffering a new political communication interraction and strategy, both in presidential candidates’ vision and mission deployment also their working progrms to the public especially for millenial generation and as the public’s reference in judging the presidential candidates’s vision an mission quality and quantity in the Election 2019 contestation.