THE ROLE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN PROMOTING ASEAN COMMUNITY
Sugito and Sidiq Ahmadi
Program Studi Ilmu Hubungan Internasional
UNIVERSITAS MUHAMMADIYAH YOGYAKARTA
Abstract
ASEAN community as a goal of ASEAN regionalism, needs mutual understanding of social, economic, and political reality from the government and its citizen. In todays digital age, the social media is replacing mass media as a platform for people to do communication discourse. According to Hacker and Dick (2000), information and communication technologies provide space for people to discuss economic, social and political issues that feel and create a common awareness and social movement. People can conduct public discussions indefinitely, where, and whoever the actors in talking about an issue and make it as a common concern (Habermas, 1989). ASEAN became the worlds largest internet user. More than 320 million Internet users in January 2017. Total internet users in the largest six countries are of 315.46 million people and social media users of 284.4 million people where 253 million use gadget. (www.aseaup.com, 2017). Knowing this great potential drives great opportunity to utilize social media as a medium for discussing ASEAN among its citizens. The research question is how ASEAN and its people of member countries use social media in communication discourses on ASEAN and create a shared awareness. We will use qualitative approach with discourse analysis method to understand the patterns and contents of discourses in social media, especially on Facebook and Twitter since these two media are popularly used in ASEAN. The results of this study indicate that the use of Facebook and Twitter has not been optimal in the discourse of ASEAN. Number of Facebook residents who became follower of until 2017 only 646,000 people and visited by 10 638 people.
Keywords: Social Media, ASEAN Community, Communication Discourses
Topic: International Symposium on Social Sciences, Humanities, Education, and Religious Studies