Socially Mediated Populist Communication in Indonesia’s 2018 Gubernatorial Elections

Populism has evolved in Indonesia and has been adopted by Indonesian political actors within the context of both the national and local elections. Secular nationalist and Islamic populism have also been frequently exploited by the Indonesian political actors who contested in these elections. However, we have little knowledge of what encouraged the candidates, nominated by the Indonesian political parties who competed in Indonesia’s 2018 gubernatorial elections, to take up populism as a means for developing socially mediated populist political communications to win the elections. Focusing on these issues, this article selects 53 gubernatorial candidates from among those who ran in these elections as cases and proposes socially mediated populist communication as a conceptual framework. This is followed by analysing the campaign materials posted on the candidate’s Facebook pages prior to the elections using traditional content analysis. It was found that most of the gubernatorial candidates adopted socially mediated populist political communication strategies but only some of them vigorously established an inclusive populist political communication strategy based on secular nationalist and Islamic populism. Such developments were determined by the parties’ ideological orientation and their position in the government as well as the party candidates’ political career duration, education level, and background. This article offers the two following knowledge-based contributions: (1) it visualises the two socially mediated populist political communication models adopted by the political actors in Indonesia’s local elections; and (2) it chronicles the types of party-related and candidate-related factors that determine such adaptations. Professionals could consider these models when aiding political party candidates during the elections.