Political Image Transformation through AI-based Digital Representation

Over the past few years digital actually has been developed a lot to the point where today the Indonesian society has been accustomed to it.This is a transition that is ongoing not only in terms of communication, work or entertainment, but in understanding and engaging in politics as well.Today, social media and visual content, along with artificial intelligence (AI) have redefined the political communication architecture of modernity.How Prabowo Subianto and Gibran Rakabuming Raka ticket employs AI to boost image, messaging, and affect with the very digitally-savvy & materially poor younger generation in this fascinating turn in the road of the 2024 presidential election [1].What's remarkable about this phenomenon is not only the fact that AI is used as a campaigning tool, but the manner in which technology is used to repair the reputation of a political personality.Prabowo has been portrayed for decades as the hard military man, but he is being repackaged as a "Gemoy" personality, cute, fun, and more in touch with youth culture.It wasn't an organic transformation, but one that has been engineered for distribution in digital content, animation, memes and AI-generated avatars on TikTok, Instagram, and CapCut.Representation theory, which underpins this research, is one of the key cornerstones of the study of culture and media communication.For Stuart Hall, a pioneer of the Cultural Studies school, representation was not just the act of reproducing reality, but a practice that included the construction of social reality itself [2].It means that representation is not passive; it is active and ideological, representation has a meaning, it constructs a meaning, and at the same time it can regard the way in which people think about an object, a figure, and an event.Hall even sees representation as the way society communicates its meaning, how people in society exchange meaning through their use of language, images, and symbols [1].We do not only mean words here, but language also encompasses visual language, color, gesture, design, and story in digital media.Thus, the research question for this study, according to the above description, is: What aspects of the political image through artificial intelligence based digital campaigns are achieved?This research aims to explore the construction of political representation in the AI-infused digital campaigns in a contemporary age where political images are constructed for the purpose of inspiring young voters in the pop culture times.This is a departure from the traditional process of building images of the candidates, characterized by more emotionally resonant, humorous, and visually striking symbols that are designed for a digital audience.This study employs a qualitative design, including a case study method and thematic analysis of visual and narrative content of posts circulating on multiple social media sites, combining a case study and thematic analysis methods.Using the framework of Stuart Hall's theory of representation, we examined how symbols in visual language and popular culture travel, circulate, and produce political significance.The finding from this analysis suggests that digital-based political representations does not merely send messages.Popular aesthetics also transform people's perception of the world, and bring people together.This projection is a means of creating a relatively generic, palatable image, despite it never being entirely reflective of the real political actor being represented.These findings shed light on the necessity of having a critical understanding of the power dynamics surrounding image circulation in the contemporary digital landscape.