The New Normal plan initiated by the government to strengthen the economy has summoned miscellaneous reactions from the public. The response mainly comes from the citizen when responding to the regulation.
The results of research studies by the Center for Digital Society (CfDS) UGM Faculty of Social and Political Sciences researchers said that citizens did not thoughtfully respond to New Normal. Not a few of them made New Normal talk as a joke in online news and Twitter.
CfDS Study of UGM Faculty of Social and Political Sciences appraised there was confusion in the community regarding the implementation protocol for The New Normal. At least nine circulars and protocols proposed to the public are still not comprehensive. It is because the content is most only contains repeated calls for the prevention of the spread of Covid-19.
Iradat Wirid, as CfDS Researcher stated that the emergence of the word New Normal was enough to convince netizens, and they experienced confusion with the appearance of new terms. However, there was a reduction in the tangling of the new terms after the government then changed the term New Normal to the adaptation of new habits towards a productive society safe in Covid-19.
"This new term seems to be more solid and clearer about the adaptation of activities to be carried out in the future," he said at a CfDS study press conference related to citizens who did not respond thoughtfully about "New Normal" through 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. Five types of accounts dominate conversations, such as accounts of public officials, government agencies, online media, mention-confess (menfess), and popular Twitter accounts.
In the Menfes and popular account Twitter, citizens reckon that the implementation of New Normal is a way too early. According to him, not a few citizens gave criticism through jokes or the language of sarcasm.
"Besides, many also respond to this talk with memes or jokes that are not directly related to the New Normal talk," he said.
As a conclusion and recommendation related to the Implementation of New Normal in Indonesia based on analysis, the CfDS research team said there was confusion in the community regarding the protocol for implementing New Normal. The CfDS research team also saw that some elements of the society considered that it was too early to start implementing New Normal.
"Therefore, a survey related to the implementation of the New Normal needs to be examined 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 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 taken into consideration by the government because social media users in Indonesia reach 150 million and 55 million twitter users are active every day.
"Concerning New Normal, there are those who use this as a joke because they do not know entirely for New Normal definition, and they only crave this as a joke," he said.
Diah Angendari, a CfDS researcher, said that the research conducted by taking data from online news and Twitter with a period of 7 May to 5 June 2020. This research conducted by following the implementation of New Normal talk in Indonesia 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 New Normal regulation," she said.
Diah explained that from 9,236 online news articles by various official media listed on the Press Council, the CfDS research team found that the New Normal coverage was dominated by optimism from the economic and business sectors. This information is different from stakeholders in the health sector, who claim it is too early to implement the New Normal.
"The use of the term New Normal is also often found to be used in the 'frame,' which is quite positive, while the easing of PSSB (Large-Scale Social Limitation) gets a negative meaning. The two terms are the same because the leisure of the PSBB marks the implementation of New Normal," she said.
Author: Agung Nugroho
Photo: ayosemarang.com
Translator: Natasa A