IT based social media impacts on Indonesian general legislative elections 2014

Abstract: The information technology applications in cyberspace (the internet) are currently dominated by social media. The author investigates and explores the advantages of social media implementation of any political party in Indonesian general legislative elections 2014. There are twelve national political parties participating in the election as contestants plus three local political parties in Aceh. In this research, author focus on national political parties only. The author visited, analyzed, and learnt the social media used by the contestants. Those social media are : 1) Facebook, 2) Twitter, and 3) YouTube. Author also compares the popularity of political parties on social media with the results of a real count. Then Author can discuss : 1) the impact of social media on political parties, 2) social media as a brand of political parties, 3) social media as political presentation, and 4) social media as virtual society. The results of this study indicate that Facebook is still a social media application that received high attention by the voters on a campaign of political parties. Indonesian's legislative elections won by parties that are using social media as part of their campaigns.