Author Information
Irwan Saputra, Kindi PR and Strategic Communications Consulting, IndonesiaPratiwa Dyatmika, Mining Industry Indonesia (MIND ID), Indonesia
Amirul Hazmi Hamdan, Kindi PR and Strategic Communications Consulting, Indonesia
Abstract
Prabowo Subianto was finally elected as President of the Republic of Indonesia in the 2024 General Election with the personal branding “Gemoy.” This phenomenon grew rapidly on social media, especially TikTok, and affected his political image. Although previous studies have primarily examined the meaning of this branding qualitatively, this study fills the gap by quantitatively analysing the frequency, hashtag and sentiment of conversations on Tiktok and their contribution to image formation. These public interactions are then analysed using Symbolic Convergence Theory (SCT). This study uses a constructivist paradigm with a qualitative approach. The Netnography method is applied by utilising social media monitoring analytical tools to capture public conversations on the TikTok platform between 1 September 2023 and 14 February 2024. The results show that the “Gemoy” narrative is a fantasy theme constructed by Prabowo and his campaign team in a communicative drama with elements of characters, actions, and settings that form a collective imagination among the public. This study contributes to strengthening the understanding that social media can be strategically orchestrated to build personal branding of political figures, providing new insights for the study of political communication in the digital era.
Paper Information
Conference: MediAsia2025Stream: Social Media and Communication Technology
This paper is part of the MediAsia2025 Conference Proceedings (View)
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To cite this article:
Saputra I., Dyatmika P., & Hamdan A. (2026) Reconstructing Prabowo Subianto’s Personal Branding for the 2024 Indonesian Presidential Election: A Case Study of the “Gemoy” Campaign on TikTok ISSN: 2186-5906 – The Asian Conference on Media, Communication & Film 2025: Official Conference Proceedings (pp. 113-126) https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2186-5906.2025.10
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2186-5906.2025.10
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