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Yayasan Islamic Center Badan Pendidikan Islam (BPI)
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Published on Thursday, 31 October 2019

Political Buzzer on Social Media

By MarwanUpi

What is "political buzzer"? We should define first what "buzzer" is. Nowadays, the buzzer is similar
to influencer, but both are different in purposes. The definition of buzzer tends to be a negative
term that is used for constructing and manipulating public information through social media and
they usually use hoax to gain their purposes. Meanwhile, the influencer has a positive definition as
users of social media who function to influence people about something but not for negative
purposes. Therefore, the political buzzer is the social media accounts who operate in manipulating
and constructing public opinion for political purposes. Like many influencers who endorse a
product of a company, the buzzer is also paid for their job by political interests or politicians.

Current research conducted by Oxford University reveals that the Indonesia government uses the
buzzers for manipulating public information. The buzzer will create opinions to cover up non-
populist or bad government policies so that people will not be aware that the policy is bad for
them. By contrast, they consider what the government does is always good even those criticizing
the government for its policy will be stigmatized as a radical group. For instance, the chaos in
Papua because of inappropriate policies by the government has been diverted by its buzzer that
what happens in Papua is efforts by specific groups who want to enforce Khilafah State, a county
with Islamic law. Another example is that its buzzers construct opinion that people who criticize
government policy in weakening KPK (corruption eradication commission) are radical/extremist
group.

How to identify political buzzers? They always have many followers on their social media
accounts. The followers are their target over the information or opinion they make. The followers
are expected to read as well as believing the information and then share it. The information will be
circulated among social media users and then they bring it in real life. Another characteristic is that
the buzzers will post similar information frequently so that people always remember on the issue.
The more they have many followers and update the information, the more effective they do their
job.

Sometimes the poet can create beautiful sentences, but they lack inspirations. They want to bring
sadness to happiness. Looking at smiles and nice flowers in the garden when spring comes. The
silent adventurer wants to walk with a pure purpose for breaking the darkness. Let me.

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