Communication Network Analysis of Negative Campaigns on #BapakHoaxNasional in the 2019 Presidential Election

Abstract

The 2019 Indonesia presidential election took place both in real-life and virtual settings, including on social media. Among the many forms of discourse, expressing political views using a hashtag is common practice on Twitter. This communication network analysis research is conducted to describe the structure of a negative campaign network on #BapakHoaxNasional on Twitter and the actor(s) with significant roles within that network. The results of this study show that this network has a low density, loose structure with low cohesiveness concentrated among five main actors: @jokowi, @jhrpujianto, @rfauzy5, @doddy_lukas__, and maktal_212, for the Mention and Reply Tweet network. The Twitter account @jokowi is the most significant actor, with the highest score on degree centrality, betweenness centrality, and eigenvector centrality.