The “New Normal” Policy and Its Sentiments in Indonesia
On May 7th, President Joko Widodo stated that people in Indonesia have to live in peace with the novel Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). At that time, the term “new normal” did not become a euphoria term yet in Indonesia, but the seed was already seen. Then, about a week later, on May 16th, President firstly stated the “new normal” term through his video speech. Here, he planned to re-open several economic, industry, and transportation sectors as soon as possible. This was legalized by The Ministry of Health Decree Number HK.01.07/MENKES/328/2020 on May 20th regarding The Guideline on the Prevention and Control of COVID-19 in Office and Industrial Workplace in Supporting the Business Sector on Pandemic Situation. Soon after the release of the decree, Indonesian netizen talked about this with “#newnormalcovid19” hashtag on twitter.
Starting from a tweet on May, 20th, the mentions in this hashtag gained attention on May, 25th-26th as a result of President visits on Summarecon Mall, Bekasi City which indicates that the government has a huge intention to implement the new normal. This conversation gained more and more attention until it reached its peak on May, 29th where most sub-national governments would follow the national direction in implementing the new normal on June, 1st. Yet, after May 29th, the trend was fall until this post is written. It seems that most netizen just spontaneously reacts to government policy through the tweets. And this confirms that most of the ordinary citizens cannot do further to intervene in the policy.
From the trends, we could also identify the sentiments of Indonesian people which was reflected in their tweets. Based on the DroneEmprit Academic dashboard, it could be seen that, in the beginning, there is a more negative sentiment that emerged within the trends. Yet, in May, 28th to 30th, there is a more positive sentiment. It seems that people did not agree with the government's decision on the re-opening of Malls during this pandemic, while they mostly agree with the new normal in the continuation of national strategic projects which was announced in May, 29th by President.
Regarding the spatial distribution, the tweets came mostly from Jakarta, which is around 70% of the total tweets. The rest is from other cities that are mostly located in Java Island. It makes sense because users living in Jakarta are mostly attracted to the current issues, including the new normal policy, and there are various users within the city, ranging from ordinary people, academics, national figures, politicians, mass media, to celebrities.
Finally, the most interesting part is the social network analysis (SNA) that combines the sentiment networks and the spatial geography of the hashtag represented by the tweets and retweets. If we take a look at the SNA quickly, we would get a chaotic impression of the network. Yet, when seeing it further, there are three big clusters with different general sentiments. First, cluster at the top which shows more positive sentiments grouping people who support the new normal. Second, cluster in the middle which shows more negative sentiments grouping people who refuse the new normal policy. And the third, cluster at the bottom which shows a group of people who do not have a clear notion regarding the policy, yet they are mostly surrounded by positive sentiments.
All in all, it is likely that most people in Indonesia give their support for the government to do the new normal policy just for the continuation of the national strategic projects. Yet, they disagree with the new normal policy to be applied in the business sector, such as the re-opening of Malls.
