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Monday, 6 April 2015

My Key Opinion Leader

 Theoretically, Opinion Leader is a leader for a certain group who gives details and information to lesser active people in the group. Opinion leaders pick up information from mass media and they interpret the information to their own language and pass on the information to the people. Opinion leader only can be leader for their own group / field not for all.

When leaders are transforming the information, leaders may add their opinion on the actual content. But also the Opinion leaders can filter the actual content ensures the information is needed by the people. Leaders should be able to influence public especially their followers to have same opinion. At least they have strong opinion which able to create public opinion. Those leaders got the power from many sources: it can be from culture capital (family background), status social, and also reputation. These reasons will gain a trustworthy of people to listen and follow leader’s opinion.

In the past, opinion leader get the access to spread their opinion through traditional way, they talk face to face and the opinion was spread. But now, the communication channel improves, the opinion leader use new medium, which is social media to deliver their opinion.

Opinion Leader
She is Melanie Subono, a multitalented woman. She sings, writes, does business, and social media activist. She has more than 600.000 followers on twitter and 30.000 followers on instagram, she also has own website; www.melaniesubono.com to publish her writing, opinion, and campaign. Based on her writing and social media post, she concerns to some issue such as; immigrant, women and fauna.  Because of her writing, achievement in music industry and contribution to social issue, she becomes popular in society.  

She becomes famous because her family background too. She comes from reputable family; her father is Adrie subono who is one of the best music promoter; Javaindo. Her grand father is Bj. Habibie who is third president of Indonesia.  Unintentionally, her family background supports her to be influential in her society.

She also well known as the founder of some petition such as; the immigrant case; Bukankah seharusnya dia membela mereka? #SupportImasTati[1]. In June 2012, Melanie won a campaign that forced Migrant Workers Task Force chairman Maftuh Basyuni to apologize for his remarks about abused migrant workers. Another petitions; she asked for the House of Representatives to not endorse Daming Sunusi as a Supreme Court justice for making insulting remarks to rape victims. More than 10,000 Internet users supported her cause by signing the petition over the course of only one day, and the number is growing. [2]It shows that she use change.com as communication channel to spread her opinion to influence public opinion.

Analysis of Case Study
A couple of week ago, she also speaks out about the fauna care in Bali. She critiques Bali government who states like in the picture. She posts it to her instagram and a lot of her follower comment about it. Her caption on this post is quite sensitive because she mentions to the government rudely. But she get same thoughts from her followers, her follower agree of what she thinks. Not only that, she also mention about the dog in twitter and got hundred of re-tweet.

Through this context, why does she become opinion leader; she able to influence people to have same thought. How does she become opinion leader?  she pick up the news from mass media which is kompas.com and pass on to the follower through her social media. She uses her communication platform to convey her opinion to build public opinion. Not only that, she also was interviewed by metro TV and discussed about immigrant issue as her concern. This can be good example of opinion leader, because metro TV was asking her opinion to a specific issue; immigrant. And she pass through the opinion to the audience.

Relate to Theory

Back to her background, she is influenced by cultural capital. What kind of cultural capital, which are family reputation and social status. This cultural capital shapes the way of she is. Through this cultural capital, she defines herself as someone who has power to influence others. This her identity impacts to the character of her followers too, how the character defined them self and current issue based on her perspective.

Talking about ideology, she transfers her ideology; (what she interests) to the follower and audience. Her aim of ideology framework through print or media; which is to make people her followers have same perspective when they concerns to several issue; migrant. She sets the framework by filtering and editing the, message or information; so

She also contribute to create an imagined community, for example; the dog’ case in Bali. Unintentionally, she states that behalf of dog lovers against it. It means she use the term of behalf which is all of dog lovers to encourage a society to be community. How she shows her semiotics also quite amigo, because actually, she uses media to deliver the information. I think she represents her self through personality, she doesn’t has specific strategies for her branding but in my perspective; she already set her future and keep maintaining the relationship with followers via social media.






For Introduction in Sociology 
HHM 
5th Semester - Binus International 

[1] https://www.change.org/p/bukankah-seharusnya-dia-membela-mereka-supportimastati
[2] http://www.nationmultimedia.com/aec/Indonesian-online-activists-gather-for-change-30198352.html

1 comment:

  1. Well said! Key Opinion leaders play a vital role in the development of pharmaceutical organization. Hence it is recommended that the organization take necessary steps for building KOL relationship and managing them effectively.
    KOL India | KOL management

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