The Political Aesthetics of Jokowi and Prabowo on Instagram
Lingga Agung, Novian Denny Nugraha Paku Kusuma
Visual Communication Design, Telkom University, Jl. Telekomunikasi, Jl. Terusan Buah Batu No.1, Bandung, Indonesia
Keywords: Politics, Aesthetics, Instagram.
Abstract: Towards the Presidential Election of the Republic of Indonesia in April 2019, social media has becomes one
of the most important campaign media. In addition to Facebook and Twitter, Instagram is one of social media
that quite popular in Indonesia political practice—esspecialy for the millennial. Both candidate have an
Instagram account. This occur because Instagram has a significant influence in contructing Jokowi and
Prabowo images. Instagram which is popular among millennial is an interesting political discourse to be
explored because both Jokowi and Prabowo tend to narrate their political image into kind of images that is
more familiar with the ‘tastes’ of millennial. Through Pierre Bourdieu’s habitus and Jacques Rancière's the
distribution of the sensible theories, this study examine how Jokowi's and Prabowo's Instagram uploads
narrate their political image which constructs the ‘feelings’ of millennial in political practice in Indonesia.
1 INTRODUCTION
The development of technology in recent years has
given birth to a new culture known as digital culture.
Digital culture according to Ross (1991) is, the circuit
of cultural practices touched by advanced technology.
Referring to this understanding, digital culture can be
interpreted as a culture that born from the womb of
the technological development. Therefore, digital
culture is not only a transformation of technology but
also a cultural transformation because it changes
human habits in general. Digital cultures were not
without problems. The practice of digital culture that
was built through unlimited interaction between
humans has caused the disruption of certain social
classes. This is because the pre- requirements and
requirements for becoming ‘a member of the social
class’ in digital culture are ignored.
In Indonesia, the impact of digital culture creates
various social problems. For example, the problem
between online and conventional transportation. The
problem arises because the ‘establishment’ of
conventional transportation is disrupted due to the
practice of digital culture that ignores the pre-
requirements and requirements of ‘social class
members’ in conventional transportation that was
built through the system of ‘territorial and kinship’.
They’re also a huge problem in the political practice
of Indonesia. The pre- requirements and requirements
for becoming a well-known politician was having a
strong ‘cultural capital’ such as family background.
But in digital culture, ‘cultural capital’ we’re not
enough because mass movements has distorted the
‘establishment cultural capital’. Thus, a politician
who doesn't have any ‘cultural capital’ but have ideas
that are accord with the mass movements can
becomes more popular than politicians with abundant
cultural capital.
Social media plays an important role in the of the
global politics trends from the 2011 Egyptian
revolution to the mass movement of the ‘Islamic
Defendation 212’ (Aksi Bela Islam 212) in 2016.
Social media has disrupted the political practices that
we have known so far and this has creating the
unprecedented emancipation. Through social media,
everyone has equal access to various kinds of political
issues that are occurring—including the millennial
generation (17-32 years) whose daily activities
cannot be separated from social media.
Towards the Presidential Election of the Republic
of Indonesia in April, the millennial is an important
factor for Jokowi and Prabowo, given their large
number of around 40% or 80 million of the total 196.5
million eligible (Irawanto, 2019). However,
millennial typically characterized as a generation that
is politically apathetic. Therefore, the two
presidential candidates must work extra hard in
gaining millennial votes. Social media is one of the
right ways to do it. Through social media, Instagram
that are popularly among millennial, Jokowi and
44
Agung, L., Nugraha, N. and Kusuma, P.
The Political Aesthetics of Jokowi and Prabowo on Instagram.
DOI: 10.5220/0008544800440050
In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Interdisciplinary Arts and Humanities (ICONARTIES 2019), pages 44-50
ISBN: 978-989-758-450-3
Copyright
c
 2020 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved

Prabowo strive to make their image accordant with
millennial aspirations. These efforts can be seen from
various visual uploads in the Instagram feed of
Jokowi and Prabowo.
But from the research that we did on Jokowi and
Prabowo's Instagram accounts, both of them did not
explicitly do kind of campaign. This is because,
Jokowi and Prabowo have an official campaigning
account but the reachability level is very weak
because @jokowi has 16.9 million followers while
@jokowi.amin only has 378 thousand followers.
@prabowo followed by 2.9 million people while
@indonesiaadilmakmur only followed by 340
thousand people. Jokowi and Prabowo have loyal and
even fanatical supporters who in recent months have
often been involved in various contention on every
social level including Instagram. The Executive
Director of the Association for Elections and
Democracy (Perludem), Titi Anggraini said that this
was triggered by the attitude of elites and politicians
supporting the candidate pair. Because, they show
attitude towards aggression and attacking narratives
on their political opponents (Tirto.id, 2019)
Jokowi and Prabowo seemed to dampen the
turmoil of fanaticism and aggressiveness from the
supporters. Thus, both of them posted the same
picture of them hugging each other in Asian Games
2018. But on the Instagram, Jokowi and Prabowo
seem to continue the campaign implicitly implicitly.
Yuval Noah Harari (2018) stated that elections are
always about human ‘feeling’, not about human
rationality. Cynically Harari continued, If democracy
was a matter of rational decision-making, there would
be absolutely no reason for all people equal voting
right—or perhaps any voting right at all. In
democracy, ‘free will’ becomes the basis for humans
to make their choices and that choice is an expression
of ‘feelings’ for what they choose; because all
humans have ‘free will’ so that rational-irrational
choices become unimportant. When speaking
‘feelings’ in a political context, this is where
aesthetics has a very significant role and therefore
Jokowi and Prabowo continue to campaign
implistfully on their Instagram.
Aesthetics does not only examine beauty.
According to Pierre Bourdieu, aesthetics is a
mechanism of social reproduction where knowledge
and tastes are distributed through regenerative
systems that take place hierarchically and
simultaneously structure agencies (active actors)
involved in the reproductive field of that culture. In
this context, Bourdieu emphasized that ‘cultural
capital’ plays a role in the cultural field where ‘the
sense of norms’ becomes a social classification
mechanism (Setyaningrum, 2009). From Jokowi and
Prabowo's uploads on Instagram, we see the efforts to
‘normalize the tastes’ as a form of campaign
mechanism that is aligned with millennial
aspirations—especially in visual uploads.
Jokowi and Prabowo's visual uploads have the
same pattern, narrating something that is
‘biographical’ such as self-image and family. This
study aim, first examines how Jokowi and Prabowo
narrated their self-image through a variety of visual
uploads on Instagram. As an Incumbent Jokowi has
several significant advantages compared to
Prabowo—this one of the reason Jokowi did not
campaign explicitly on his Instagram account because
it could be easily ‘attacked’ by his political
opponents. Therefore, we choose the pattern that
belongs to the both candidates: self-image, which
includes various meetings with important people and
families. Secondly, we examine how the aesthetic
mechanism in Jokowi and Prabowo's Instagram
visual uploads constructs the political aspirations of
the millennial so that it creates 'feelings' that are
accordant with their aspirations. This research was
conducted 4 months ago until after the 2nd
Presidential Candidate Debate was completed.
2 RESEARCH METHODS
Researching on Instagram is relatively a new
phenomenon, especially the mechanism of aesthetics
that normalizes images in a political context. In this
study we use a virtual ethnographic approach, which
is a new approach to seeing cultural, artifact in the
virtual world (Nasrullah, 2018). Virtual ethnography
reveals how cyber culture is produced, meanings,
relationships and patterns, to how they function
through the medium of the internet (Nasrullah, 2018).
According to Nasrullah, there are several levels of
analysis such as ‘media space’ which relates to the
technical aspects of digital culture, ‘media document’
which deals with ‘texts’ in digital culture as cultural
artifacts, ‘media objects’ that are related to
interactions between organisms in digital culture, and
‘experiential stories’ are connectedness of organisms
offline and online.
This research is at the ‘media document’ level
because examined a variety of Jokowi and Prabowo's
Instagram visual uploads. Müller and Geise (2015)
define images as a mental construct of object or a
person, which is generated on a basis consciously or
unconsciously perceived (media) images, facts,
associations, experience or judgments. Grittmann
(2012) further explains that the visual presentation of
The Political Aesthetics of Jokowi and Prabowo on Instagram
45

politics is condensed to repertory of visual imagery,
which is constructed by selection, and, thus
attribution of meaning. Jokowi and Prabowo's visual
uploads are cultural artifacts that are constructed
through complex mechanisms that are worthy of
further investigation.
The research began 4 months ago until the 2nd
Presidential Candidate Debate. In that time we
examine the visual upload of Jokowi and Prabowo
one by one. Then we classify it considering the
similar patterns between the two, and from this
classification we decided on 3 units of analysis, (1)
Meeting Type with politicians, religious leaders,
public figures; (2) Family Type, about his family, and
(3) Personal Type, the current or past relevant self-
image. As incumbent, Jokowi has several types of
uploads that are eminent to Prabowo. Therefore, we
will examine the visual uploads that owned by the two
candidates: Meeting Type (in this type we limit both
meetings with religious leaders because they have
significance for both political images), Family Type,
and Personal Type. These three types have very
strong relations in the political practice of Indonesia.
3 RESULTS AND DISSCUSION
Instagram is an effective social media for campaign
implicitly and explicitly. Ridwan Kamil, Governor of
West Java is a politician who effectively uses
Instagram as a medium to portray himself ‘as the
nowadays leader’ and Alexander Van der Bellen who
was elected President of Austria in 2016 that effective
and explicitly using Instagram as a media campaign
(Leibhart & Bernhardt, 2017) –and as we speaking of
images, aesthetics has a very significant role in it.
Jacques Ranciere all art is politics because it
establishing what is valuable to people because there
a distribution of the sensible therefore establishes at
one and the same time something common that is
shared and exclusive parts (Ranciere, 2011). For him,
art has a political essence that distributes human
experience and hope. Photo uploads on Instagram are
not art in a sense. However, every photo that posted
on Instagram distributes our experiences and hopes.
Instagram, which was released in 2010, is well known
as a social media that provides more aesthetic
experience than other social media—many features
help us to do kind of ‘beautification’ before uploading
it. So it is not excessive if Instagram can be
categorized as an aesthetic regime because of a major
form of aesthetics distribution.
Digital Revolution: National Launching of 4G on
January 4, 2016 was Jokowi's first Instagram upload.
As of February 20, 2019, Jokowi has 16.7 Million
Followers, 0 Followings, and 1,049 thousand posts.
While Prabowo for the first time posted a photo of
skydiver group exposing, “BERSATULAH
BANGSAKU” on September 20, 2015. Until
February 20, 2019, Prabowo had 2.8 million
Followers, 1 Following, and 346 posts. Jokowi’s
Profile Picture is himself sitting at his desk with a
white shirt and set in a carved ‘gunungan wayang’
and Indonesia national flag. Jokowi's home
describing, “The official Instagram account of the
President of the Republic of Indonesia, Joko Widodo
(Indonesia Flag), Hastag (#) MenujuIndonesiaMaju,
and managed by the President's Digital
Communication Team.” While Prabowo's profile
picture depicts himself in vector form with a formal
suit. Prabowo's home only contains a link to his
Facebook account: “facebook.com/ Prabowo
Subianto.”
In the Meeting Type, Jokowi was more eminent to
Prabowo because of his status as incumbent. Jokowi
uploaded various meetings with politicians with 20
uploads, 25 religious leaders, and with public figures
16 uploads. While Prabowo uploaded his meeting
with politicians as many as 14 upload, meeting with
public figures as many as 3 uploads—but there was
no upload of Prabowo's meeting with religious
leaders.
Figure 1: Meeting Islamic Cleric Syekh Haji Hasyim Al-
Syarwani Tuan Guru Babusalam, @jokowi Instagram,
2019
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46

Figure 2: Meeting with Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono the 6th
Indonesia President, @Prabowo Instagram, 2019.
Meeting Type is an important ‘cultural capital’
because it legitimizes leadership images at many
social levels. In Indonesia, the legitimacy of religious
leaders is very important. Historically, the coalition
between the two is very obvious. A ruler always
needs the legitimacy of religious leader. In Indonesia
meeting a Kyai (Islamic Clerics) is the most ultimate
legitimacy because it portrays a leader who is close to
Muslims. Some of Jokowi's visual upload with Kyai
are a form of construction because Jokowi has always
been accused of being an anti-Islami. With the
increasingly religious people of Indonesia, including
the millennial generation, these visual uploads are
Jokowi's efforts to affirm his image and position as a
leader who is close to Muslims.
Through photos with Kyai, Jokowi distributed
what Renciere called the distribution of sensible and
further emphasized the importance of Islam for him.
In Prabowo's Instagram we did not find any uploads
with prominent Kyai. However, in the Personal Type,
Prabowo uploaded 9 photos of himself with religious
appearance such as praying and being in the Holy
Land as well as the “Aksi Bela Islam 212”. There
were several uploads of Prabowo with politicians who
were influential in in Indonesia. One of them was his
photo with the former Indonesian 6th President,
Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY). This photo was
very important because it constructs the image of
Prabowo as a potential leader who gained legitimacy
from the previous leaders.
In the Family Type, Jokowi uploaded 13 photos
while Prabowo 28 photos. Prabowo uploaded many
photos of his family in the past while Jokowi only
uploaded once while performing Hajj in 2003.
Prabowo uploaded 3 old photos of his mother (Dora
Marie Sigar) while Jokowi only uploaded a relatively
new photo with his mother. From 28 Family Types
uploaded by Prabowo, only 8 photos were relatively
new. The rest of the photos was bunch of old photos.
There were no photos of a young Prabowo with his
whole family. Whereas 13 photos of Family Type
uploaded by Jokowi have nothing from the past. All
the photos are relatively new and show Jokowi's wife,
children, and grandchildren. Prabowo never uploaded
his own complete family photo considering his status
as widower. There were only 2 photos uploaded
together with his only son, Didit Hediprasetyo and a
photo with his ex-wife with other relatives.
Figure 3: Family picture of Jokowi’s Family minus
Kaesang (Jokowi second son), @jokowi Instagram, 2019
Figure 4: Old Family picture of Prabowo with his mother,
sister, and brother, @prabowo Instagram, 2019
The family in the political practice of Indonesia
were an important cultural capital. According to
Bourdieu, cultural capital is a cultural resource that
can place the position of an individual. Cultural
capital consists of three forms, (1) incorporées which
include general knowledge, skills, cultural values,
religion, norms, derivative talents, (2) objectivées
which include ownership of high value cultural
objects, (3) institutionalisé which includes titles, level
of education, certain skills acquired through
education (Krisdianto, 2014). In Indonesia we know
the term The Politic Dynasty, where important
positions in the government are filled with people
who have family relations with those who have or are
in power—this practice in the New Order era gave
birth to nepotism.
Muhammad Heychael in Politik Kekeluargaan
dan Kekuasaan Yang Berpusat Pada Tubuh argues
that family politics as a mode of power is also
The Political Aesthetics of Jokowi and Prabowo on Instagram
47

reproduced in various units of power to the lowest
(Indoprogress.com, 2014). The New Order which
came to power for 32 years long (1966-1998) has
created a family culture that is embedded in political
practice in Indonesia. The practice of family politics
mythologically departs from Javanese culture and it
is not surprising that in practice it gave birth to the
concept of ‘The Choosen Family’. This practice is
deeply rooted in Indonesian culture so that a leader is
always cultured as a figure who comes from the
chosen family/noble family and has the authority of
‘the choosen one—In fact many Indonesian political
figures come from noble classes.
Jokowi uploaded photos of his family: wife,
children, and grandchildren. These photos are
relatively new, also the one with his mother. Jokowi
through these photos tried to portray and represent
something new that different from of his rival. Jokowi
tried to assert that he was a leader who came from
ordinary people—born from the womb of the people.
Jokowi came from a family that did not have a good
cultural capital as Prabowo. But in practice, Jokowi
was able to compete and even beat Prabowo in certain
way. Thus, Prabowo represented the old family
values of the New Order style while Jokowi came up
with newer values that were different because they
tried to represent the people in general.
In the Personal Type, Jokowi uploaded 21 photos
and Prabowo 45 photos. From the 45 photos of the
Personal Type, Prabowo 14 of the photos he uploaded
always exposed his past when he was a teenager and
a High Officer with the position of Special Forces
Command Commander (Kopassus) and Commander
of the Army Strategic Command (Pangkostrad).
Jokowi, from the 21 Personal Type photos he
uploaded, only 1 photo that came from the past when
the young Jokowi was cooking some noddle while
mountaineering with some of his friends.
Figure 5: Old photos of Jokowi with his friends, @jokowi
Instagram, 2019.
Figure 6: Old photos of Prabowo in his early military karir,
@prabowo Instagram, 2019.
The Political Dynasty that conducted by the New
Order's also gave birth to the concept of 'fatherhood'.
This concept of ‘bapakisme’ or ‘fatherism’ departs
from Suharto's leadership style when in power.
Mulder in Muhammad Heychael said that by
analogizing the state as a family, students were
invited to see Suharto as a father figure rather than a
president, and the people were children who needed
guidance. The relationship between the two, as well
as the relationship between father and son in the
family, is bound by morals and based on spirituality.
Obviously, in such a worldview, people's (children's)
protests or criticisms of the government (parents) are
moral, ethical, and spiritual violations
(Indoprogress.com, 2014).
Prabowo in the Personal Type portrays the
concept of ‘fatherism’. Prabowo portrays himself as a
nurturing charismatic leader and is ready to face and
fight various threats. And visually represented
through fashion, speech styles, and pets. In terms of
fashion, Prabowo had a fashion style that combined
the clothing of the Indonesia founding father from
Sukarno to General Sudirman. So that Prabowo
seemed very patriotic and nationalist especially his
military background which further strengthened his
leadership image. Prabowo's style during a speech
mimicked Sukarno's style and even Bung Tomo's.
What's the most interesting upload were the beautiful
horses that cost billions of rupiah. Horses are one of
Prabowo's social capital which confirms that
economically he is well-established with a hobby of
maintaining horses that not just anyone can do.
Jokowi only uploaded a single photo from the
past. The photo shows the young Jokowi cooking
noodles while doing his hobby: mountaineering a
very common hobbies not like the expensive hobbies
of Prabowo. Jokowi's fashion is so simple: white
folded shirt. The simplicity of Jokowi's clothing
implies his readiness to work and to serve the people.
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Jokowi is also known as the concept of
‘blusukan’/coming to the people directly and the
image is constructed through the simplicity of the
clothes he wears. Jokowi's speech style seems flexible
but with pressure that implies his courage in facing
anything for the sake of the nation and country.
Jokowi does not have pet but once he upload the
releasing birds in the Bogor botanical garden. It
seems that Jokowi portrays himself as a leader who
'frees' his people. Jokowi's efforts to aspire his
openness to the millennials are by uploading many
kind of images that are close to them, such as the
narration that Jokowi is a metalhead and this has been
implemented several times by attending music events.
On several occasions Jokowi was seen riding a
custume motorbike with locally made clothing. It
portrays Jokowi as a leader who is close to and
strongly supports the creativity of the millennial
generation.
4 CONCLUSIONS
In the practice of contemporary politics in Indonesia,
The role of Instagram cannot be ignored because it is
able to distribute the image that accordant to the
politician. Instagram has disrupted the establishment
of political practices so that cultural capital and social
capital also change. Therefore, Instagram is very
important in the practice of digital politics in
Indonesia.
This was well realized by politicians and towards
the Presidential Election, the two presidential
candidates were aware of the importance social media
role in a political practice. Although the two
candidates for President of the Republic of Indonesia,
Jokowi and Prabowo did not make their personal
Instagram account the main campaign media but
implicitly still narrated their political image.
In this study we found the same pattern between
the two candidates, which is ‘biographical’ with the
following classifications: (1) Meeting Type which is
the meeting with important people—especially
religious leaders and political figures, (2) Family
Type, the uploads about family, and (3) Personal
Type, the uploads of the relevant self-image. In the
three types of uplads, Jokowi is more eminent
considering his status as incumbent.
Jokowi and Prabowo narrate the image which
were constructed through the aesthetic mechanism
quoting Ranciere ‘the distribution of the sensible’
because it tries to distribute the aspirations of its
audience—especially millennials. Indonesian
Millennial are divided into two political
consciousnesses, the New Order and the
Reformation. And from the results of the research that
we did, the two Presidential candidates had
significant differences in narrating their political
image.
The results of our analysis of the three types of
uploads, Jokowi represents a new political values
while Prabowo represents old political values and
tends to be ‘New Order-Ish’. Although Jokowi, in the
Meeting Type uploaded many meetings with the
Kyai—a construction of political culture in Indonesia
that had existed throughout the history. In the Family
and Personal Type uploads, there is a clear dichotomy
between Jokowi and Prabowo because both have and
represent two very opposite; Jokowi with his new
values and Prabowo with his old values. Jokowi was
coming from nothing; Prabowo was coming from
something great—the family. Jokowi construct his
images as a leader who born from the people while
Prabowo portrays himself as ‘heir to the Indonesia
political and leadership throne’. Jokowi and Prabowo
portrays themselves as a different leader even though
in some uploads it continues to portray leadership
with Indonesian (Javanese) political culture.
This research has many shortcomings and there
are many things that can be explored more deeply.
Through this research we hope to be able to provide a
kind of picture of contemporary Indonesian political
practice through social media, especially Instagram
through cultural capital, social capital, and how
aesthetic mechanisms construct and distribute the
sensibility of the aspirations of its audience—
millennial.
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