The government’s New Normal plan to strengthen the economy has caused various public reactions, especially netizens.
Based on the study conducted by the Center for Digital Society (CfDS) from the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences UGM, netizens did not give a serious response regarding New Normal. Many of them made it became a joke on the online news and Twitter.
The study showed that there was confusion in the community regarding the New Normal implementation protocol. At least nine circular letters and protocols proposed to the public are still not comprehensive. It is because the content mostly contains repeated appeals regarding the prevention of Covid-19.
Iradat Wirid, as a researcher at CfDS said New Normal immensely influenced netizens, and they were confused with the emergence of new terms. The confusion reduced after the government changed the New Normal term into new habit adaptation toward a productive community safe from Covid-19.
“This new term is considered to be more solid and clear regarding what kind of adaptive activities will be conducted in the future”, said Iradat during a press conference via Google Meet on Tuesday (16/6).
Iradat explained that there were some interesting findings from the analysis of 112,471 tweets on Twitter related to New Normal. There are five types of accounts that dominate conversations, such as public officials, government agencies, online media, menfes, and popular Twitter accounts. In the menfes and popular Twitter accounts, netizens feel that the New Normal implementation is too early. According to him, not a few netizens provide criticism through jokes or sarcasm.
“Besides, there are many netizens who respond New Normal with memes or jokes which were not directly related to New Normal,” he said.
As a conclusion and recommendations regarding the New Normal implementation in Indonesia based on the analysis, the CfDS research team said there was confusion in the community regarding the New Normal implementation protocol. The CfDS research team also saw that some society elements felt that it was too early to start implementing the New Normal.
“Therefore, a review regarding the implementation of the New Normal needs to be carried out along with the formulation of a more comprehensive and detailed New Normal protocol to avoid confusion and misunderstanding from the public,” he explained.
He acknowledged that Twitter could be a tool to measure what is happening in society and become part of the community even though it does not represent everything. Twitter users aged 18-34 years in Indonesia can still be considered by the government because there are 150 million social media users in Indonesia and 55 million Twitter users who are active every day.
“Regarding New Normal, there are people who use this as a joke because they do not know completely what new normal is, and they just want this as a joke,” he said.
Diah Angendari, a CfDS researcher, stated that the research was carried out by taking data from online news and Twitter with a period from May 7 to June 5, 2020. Until this research was carried out, the implementation of the New Normal discourse in Indonesia was based on at least nine circulars and decisions between Ministries and Institutions.
“The Indonesian government uses three approaches and 11 regional health indicators in implementing the New Normal discourse,” he said.
Diah explained that from 9,236 online news articles by various official media registered in the Press Council, the CfDS research team found that New Normal’s news was dominated by optimism from the economic and business sectors. It is different from stakeholders in the health sector, who stated that the New Normal implementation in Indonesia is considered too early.
“The use of the term New Normal is also often found to be used in a fairly positive ‘frame’ while easing the Large-Scale Social Restrictions has a negative meaning. The two terms are the same thing because the easing of the Large-Scale Social Restrictions marks the implementation of the New Normal,” he said.
Source: https://ugm.ac.id/id/berita/19565-protokol-new-normal-belum-komprehensif
