Mapping the Social Movement Pattern During COVID-19 Outbreaks with the Twitter Metadata by Using Social Network Analysis (SNA) Method

DOI

10.2991/assehr.k.210506.047How to use a DOI?

Keywords

covid-19, social movement, social network analysis (SNA), immigration, digital sphere, social media, twitter

Abstract

The National positivity rates reached 14,1 percent in September 2020. More than 4000 cases were confirmed in a day, pushing the government to implement a strict policy that potentially creates pros and cons and may trigger social movement in the affected society. In the theoretical framework, the social movement started in four main stages: emergence, coalescence, bureaucratization, and decline. The polarization of the movement is usually started by the grassroots actors towards a common interest. This research aimed to analyze the social movement’s pattern and characteristics in the digital sphere by using the Social Network Analysis (SNA) method. It particularly seeks to understand the conversation network and involved actors by analyzing the Twitter dataset containing 36,929 tweets, with “COVID19Indonesia,” “Inpres” and “Pemerintah” words, obtained from July to September 2020. The RStudio Tools used to conduct sentiment analysis to gather people’s responses to the COVID-19 related policy, and Gephi Mapping Software to identify the conversation pattern between related actors. The research findings are that government-related accounts can be identified as a conversation starter. A key-person like @Fadlizon can be identified as an influencer. The mainstream media can be identified as active engagement, while ordinary people can be identified as the network builder. The conversation networks, which the government and mainstream media led, successfully triggered a social movement to support a positive public opinion about the Government Policy to Fight COVID-19 Pandemic. The sentiment analysis concluded that 65 percent responded positively, 18 percent neutral, and only 10 percent responded negatively to the government policy during the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings show the opposite aspects compared to the social movement theory. Firstly, the key actors and movement polar are dominated by the government-related and mainstream mass media to support the government policy itself, not from the grassroots actors. Secondly, Involved actors are borderless, who came from many different backgrounds and separate into a smaller conversation network to support common goals. However, the main social movement pattern is still relevant to the main stage. It started with emergence, coalescence, bureaucratization and ended with a decline stage. The new phenomenon discovered is that the digital social movement is coming from the people against the government policy or the government to influence public opinion.

Copyright

© 2021, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

Download article (PDF)

TY  - CONF
AU  - Mohammad Thoriq Bahri
AU  - Yusuf Hakim
AU  - Rezza Fauzy Sucipto
PY  - 2021
DA  - 2021/05/08
TI  - Mapping the Social Movement Pattern During COVID-19 Outbreaks with the Twitter Metadata by Using Social Network Analysis (SNA) Method
BT  - Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Law and Human Rights 2020 (ICLHR 2020)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 356
EP  - 368
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.210506.047
DO  - 10.2991/assehr.k.210506.047
ID  - Bahri2021
ER  -