ABSTRACT
Social distancing is a policy taken as a form of minimizing and suppressing the spread of COVID-19 which is increasing from time to time. The purpose of this study was to describe people's perceptions and experiences about social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic. This research was qualitative research with a phenomenological approach which was presented in a descriptive form. The location of this research was in Central Java Province. The method of data collection was carried out by in-depth interviews. The results showed that the respondents knew about social distancing well. Some respondents have applied social distancing in their daily lives. Information obtained on the behavior of sorting and choosing social distancing when in certain conditions and situations. Social distancing is applied when in public places and when meeting with strangers while when meeting with the closest people social distancing is rarely applied. There was an attitude that appears when respondents meet perpetrators of social distancing policy violations including letting them know to reprimand advice and set a good example. Most of the respondents have good knowledge of social distancing. The implementation of social distancing has been carried out in their daily lives although it has not been comprehensive. Keywords: Keeping Distance, Health Protocols, Pandemic, COVID-19
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: After two months of implementing a partial lockdown, the Indonesian government had announced the "New Normal" policy to prevent a further economic crash in the country. This policy received many critics, as Indonesia still experiencing a fluctuated number of infected cases. Understanding public perception through effective risk communication can assist the government in relaying an appropriate message to improve people's compliance and to avoid further disease spread. OBJECTIVE: This study observed how risk communication using social media platforms like Twitter could be adopted to measure public attention on COVID-19 related issues "New Normal". METHOD: From May 21 to June 18, 2020, we archived all tweets related to COVID-19 containing keywords: "#NewNormal", and "New Normal" using Drone Emprit Academy (DEA) engine. DEA search API collected all requested tweets and described the cumulative tweets for trend analysis, word segmentation, and word frequency. We further analyzed the public perception using sentiment analysis and identified the predominant tweets using emotion analysis. RESULT: We collected 284,216 tweets from 137,057 active users. From the trend analysis, we observed three stages of the changing trend of the public's attention on the "New Normal". Results from the sentiment analysis indicate that more than half of the population (52%) had a "positive" sentiment towards the "New Normal" issues while only 41% of them had a "negative" perception. Our study also demonstrated the public's sentiment trend has gradually shifted from "negative" to "positive" due to the influence of both the government actions and the spread of the disease. A more detailed analysis of the emotion analysis showed that the majority of the public emotions (77.6%) relied on the emotion of "trust", "anticipation", and "joy". Meanwhile, people were also surprised (8.62%) that the Indonesian government progressed to the "New Normal" concept despite a fluctuating number of cases. CONCLUSION: Our findings offer an opportunity for the government to use Twitter in the process of quick decision-making and policy evaluation during uncertain times in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.