The Influence of Instagram Political Literacy

KARYA#4 Karya Tulis Mahasiswa FISIP UPN Veteran Jakarta

Penulis: Faiz Akmal Rafif dan Fabian Nathaniel Putra Adya

Program Studi Ilmu Politik Angkatan 2022

Introduction 

Nowadays especially in this  globalization era, social media has  become a primary need for every  person. Social media has a lot of  functions such as communication,  spreading information, etc. All  aspects of life that connects to  technology uses social media as a  platform to do various kinds of  activities. Social media has become  attached to our daily lives and the  growth of technology will push us  more to use social media. Internet  users in indonesia is dominated by  some users in the age group of 19 to  34 years old with 49.52%, age 13 to  18 with 16,68%, and the rest are users  in the age group of 35 and above  (Katadata, 2018). This explains that  the majority of Indonesia's citizens,  especially the milennials uses social  media. 

One of the fastest emerging  social media platforms on the app  store right now is Instagram.  Instagram is an application that gives  the opportunity for users to share their  series of pictures about their moments  (Bergstrom and Backman, 2013).  Over the past ten years, Instagram has  gained millions of users for its  addicting, interactive features that  allows us to socialize in a unique,  creative way. Instagram has also  became the perfect platform for artists  to showcase their talent and works of  art and gain huge popularity from it.  Instagram has been the game changer  

for the social media industry because  its addicting and its simple to use. With every development of  times, media platforms like Instagram  are constantly changing. These  changes include new filters, features  like Insights, Stories and archives,  new ways for advertising to use  media, also changing the capacity of  the camera on mobile phones, and  more. All of this influences the  subject matter and aesthetics of any  shared images. With the growth in the  number of Instagram users from 30  million in 2012 to 300 million at the  end of 2014, Instagram has become a  valuable advertising and marketing  medium. The number of advertisers  on Instagram has increased from  200,000 in 2/2016 to one million in  3/2017. As time has progressed,  strategies for creating and running a  successful Instagram account have  been identified and described in  endless articles, blog posts, and videos (Maranovich, 2017) 

Globalization is happening  right now and many of us send  messages through all these social  media platforms and the technologies  we are offered. With social media, we  gain access to uncountable  informations spread across various  platforms. The informations we often  found have a variety of topic from  social-politics, education, health,  entertainment, etc. These  informations not only circled around  local/national field, but also the  international world. In this case, when 

we look at Instagram as our daily  social media platform, not only that  we discovered our friends' updates,  but also numerous news and  information from various subjects. 

In order to be an educated  citizen, we may have to stay in touch  by participating politics. Politics is an  activity where people create, protect,  and amend general policies in which  they live under and it can't be  detached from conflict and  cooperation (Heywood, 2013). When  we look up Instagram, we may have  experienced numerous moments  where we discovered an Instagram  post that contained a picture and a  caption about political message and  we've been in a place where we  wanted to take part in the following  issue by posting our comments and  stands about it. This is called political  participation. Political participation  can be defined as the activity of  someone or a group of people to  participate in politics actively such as  choosing state leadership and directly  or indirectly, influence the outcome  of public policy (Budiardjo, 2008). 

Participating in politics is not  only by creating or criticizing public  policies, but also developing political  literacy. Political literacy can be  defined as someone who owns  political information, knows the  process of politics such as elections,  political contributions, and  responsible as a citizen (Denver and  Hands, 2013; Krosnick, 1990).  Developing political literacy is  

crucial because political actors such  as politicians, state leaders often send  political messages and agendas that  can trick us if we don't carefully  process the informations. Instagram  as a social media platform these days  are often used by these political actors  to spread their agendas and it has  became a perfect platform for them  because of its simplicity of posting a  series of pictures filled with often  controversial captions that can drive  public opinion. 

Instagram offers us with a lot  of topic that we can enjoy and one of  them is politics. Over the course of  time, Instagram has also gained  accounts dedicated to post politics 

related things. These sorts of accounts  crucially play part in developing  political literacy for users. This article  will attempt to explain how Instagram  as a social media platform can  influence political literacy and how  citizens can make good use of  Instagram as their tool to further  develop their own political literacy. 

Literature Review 

1. Definitions of Influence 

Influence has a meaning of a  power that exists or arises from  something (people, objects) that  contributes to shaping a person's  character, beliefs, or actions (KBBI,  2001).  

Influence is the power that causes  something to happen, in the sense that  something can form or change  something else. In other words,  influence is the cause of something 

happening or can change something  to the shape we want (Badudu & Zain,  2001). 

2. Definitions of Social Media 

Social media is a page or  application that allows users to create  and share content or engage in social  networks (KBBI, 2017). Social media  is a form of internet-based application  group that builds on Web 2.0 ideology  and technology, also by enabling the  creation and exchange of user generated content (Carr & Hayes,  2015). Social media can be broken  down into three parts, first, the  information infrastructure and the  media used to create and then  distribute content. Then news, ideas  and content, as well as in the form of  cultural products that have digital  forms. Then lastly, parties such as  people or organizations that produce  products in the form of content.  Anyone can possibly contribute in  social media, as well as by  participating or giving feedback  openly, sharing and providing  information or comments in a short  and unlimited time, through the help  of the internet (Cahyono, 2016). 

3. Definitions of Political Literacy 

As previously mentioned in the  introduction, Political literacy can be  defined as someone who owns  political information, knows the  process of politics such as elections,  political contributions, and  responsible as a citizen (Denver and  Hands, 2013; Krosnick. 1990). Political literacy isn't merely based in  

which someone has enough  information about politics around  them, but also their behaviours and  attitude to fulfill the ability (Novian  and Rusmono, 2021). Political  literacy can also be meant as an ability  of someone's comprehension on  political events and political  awareness (Zaller, 1992). Being a  politically literate person doesn't  merely stand on only being an  informed person (Kus, 2015). A  politically literate person is an active  participant in social-political events  in dealing with the issue (Fyfe, 2007). 

Political literacy emphasizes that  skilled and principled actions will be  considered as the ultimate  achievement. Political literacy  specifically emphasizes skills and  attitudes. In this case there is a  difference between traditional forms  of political education and the more  recent concept of political literacy, in  that there is an explicit statement  about skills and attitudes in the  explanation of political literacy  compared to an implicit one. The  assumption in traditional political  studies is that certain important skills  and attitudes will follow from a good  foundation in politics (McNaughton,  1982). 

It is noted that people who are  called "Millennials" have little  interest in politics, especially party  politics, or have a belief that voting in  an election will result in some form of  difference, also with low expectations  from the government, although they 

find that many are willingly act on  problems that concern them, so that  an apolitical generation can be created  (Pirie and Worcester, 1998). 

4. Definitions of Political  Information 

Based on Undang-Undang  Nomor 14 tahun 2008, which explains  Public Information Disclosure, it  states that information is information,  statements, ideas and signs that  contain value, meanings, and  messages, both data, facts and  explanations that can be seen, heard,  and read presented in the  development of information and  communication technology electronic  or non-electronic.  

Therefore, the understanding  and explanation of political  information will lead to the  definitions and explanations listed,  but by emphasizing and directing to  political content or forms. 

Someone will indirectly learn  about politics through the information  he is looking for. Credible political  information is more likely to give  credence than information that has no  source whatsoever. However, the  media's framing ability can be seen to  influence political preferences. 

Methodology 

Literature Review can be  interpreted as a series of activities  related to library data collection  methods, reading, recording and  processing of materials used in  research (Zed, 2003). Literature  review also has a meaning as a data  

collection technique that is carried out  by conducting a review of books,  literature, records, and various reports  that are related to the problem to be  solved or researched (Nazir, 2003).  

A literature review is a piece  of academic writing demonstrating knowledge and understanding of the  academic literature on a specific topic  placed in context. A literature review  also includes a critical evaluation of  the material, this is why it is called a  literature review rather than a  literature report. It is a process of  reviewing the literature, as well as a  form of writing (Rudestam and  Newton, 1992). 

When conducting and writing  a literature review, the thing to do is  usually analyze and summarize the  results of the research and the results  of previous theories, identify the  nature of the problem and the claims  challenged and highlight any gaps  that may exist in the research to date.  In larger pieces of writing, such as  dissertations or projects, a literature  review is usually one of the first tasks  undertaken after deciding on a topic. 

Research Results and Analysis 

In an era of technology that  lives with a democratic society, the  rise of social media is rapid which  made political informations became  massively accessible (Bennett, 2012).  Millennials are always attached to  informations when it comes to  political literacy because  informations are well-attached to the  activity (Bakthiyar, 2018). Instagram 

as a social media platform offers politics as one of the hottest topics to  be discussed through content creators based on political fields. These  accounts usually gave users a series of  pictures that contains political  informations. Political informations  can be defined as the knowledge of  politics such as how political systems  work, the science of political debates  and everyday politics, and the science  of political actors and their  ideological differences (Gronlund,  Smith and Mcmenemy, 2017). These  political informations are mainly  presentated in the form of posters,  mindmaps, and infographics. 

People nowadays love contents that are packaged in a  simple, comfortable form to read and  enjoy. With the growth of photo  editing and design, instagram turned  into the perfect platform for users to  enjoy these well-packaged contents  and absorb information in the fastest,  convenient way. Instagram accounts  related to the political field are  competing to be the most popular  account through posting a series of  pictures contained with political  information and package it with a  simple, clean, and creative design.  Instagram accounts such as  @Pinterpolitik and @Puspenpol are  the example of accounts that offered  creative political information  contents. 

This convenience that these  accounts offered further boosted  citizen's political literacy. They can 

gain quick, convenient, reliable  political informations by reading  posters or infographics made by the  content creators. @Puspenpol for  example, offered the readers with  posts about political knowledges,  @Pinterpolitik also offered the users  with infographics about political  news and updates. These content  creators made it easy for users to learn  and discover political informations  from scratch until they become  politically literated.

Instagram: @Pinterpolitik

Political informations that are  offered by these content creators are  various, such as various terms related  to political science, concepts in  political science, study cases on  everyday problems and relating it to  political science, etc. These content  creators boosted readers' political  literacy because they educated  readers with beneficial political  informations valuable for  understanding their environment's  situation. The increase in political  literacy is also hoped to further  increase political participation for  citizens. With a society filled with  educated and politically literated  citizens, a nation can reach high  political participation from its  citizens. Instagram as one of the most  used social media plays a big factor in  the process. 

In order to face the future,  political literacy is much needed  especially in social media where false  political informations are spread  everywhere and needed re verification. Social media,  particularly Instagram is one of the  most used platforms by millennials.  This puts them as a target of  provocative and false political  informations (Lailiyah, 2018). In  order to be an educated citizen, people  must be critical about the  informations they gained. This can be  reached by developing critical  thinking.  

Critical Thinking itself is an  objective, self-regulatory assessment that results in interpretation, analysis,  evaluation, and inference, as well as  an explanation of the evidence,  conceptual, methodological, criteria,  or conceptual considerations that  underlie the judgment (Facione,  1990). Reflective and reasonable  thinking that focuses on deciding  what to believe or do (Ennis, 1985). 

Another way that can be done  to increase political literacy properly  in using Instagram social media is to  use it as positively as possible,  meaning by avoiding a directive of  forms or things that lead to unhealthy,  anarchic or dark political information,  so that filtering and choosing about  who , and what things you want to  look for greatly affect political  literacy, and make a person able to  improve his political literacy in a  good and healthy way. 

Conclusion 

In an era of technology that  lives with a democratic society, the  rise of social media is rapid which  made political informations became  massively accessible (Bennett, 2012).  Instagram as a social media platform  offers politics as one of the hottest  topics to be discussed through content  creators based on political fields.  These content creators provided a  series of pictures, mainly presentated  in the form of infographics or posters  containing political informations.  Political informations that are offered  by these content creators are various.  These content creators boosted  readers' political literacy because 

they educated readers with beneficial  political informations valuable for  understanding their environment's  situation. The increase in political  literacy is also hoped to further  increase political participation for  citizens. With a society filled with  educated and politically literated  citizens, a nation can reach high  political participation from its  citizens. Instagram as one of the most  used social media plays a big factor in  the process.