Konstruksi Identitas dan Relasi Interpersonal oleh Roleplayer Artis K-Pop di Twitter

Abstract

Indonesia is a country with the highest development of the K-Pop target market in Southeast Asia. This also raises various participatory behaviors from fans. One form of participatory behavior is roleplaying, which is playing roles on social media using a K-Pop artist's identity. As roleplayers, they will present themselves as K-Pop artists and build relationships with other roleplayers. Twitter is the social media most commonly used by roleplayers because of its features that support identity presentation and personal communication with other people. Even though they use other people's identities, roleplayers will also build various interpersonal relationships with fellow roleplayers like in the real world, from friendships to romantic relationships. This study aims to explain how K-Pop artist roleplayers construct their identity and interpersonal relationships through Twitter. This research used symbolic interactionism theory as the guide. The research method used is qualitative, with research data obtained through questionnaires with open-ended questions and analyzed thematically. From the answers of 131 respondents, K-Pop artists' identity was the object that roleplayers were trying to present. They present it by providing factual information about the artist and forming a good self-image. The way they present the K-Pop artist's identity will affect their interactions with other roleplayers, which have several determining factors, namely similarities, trust, feedback, and the parasocial relationship with the used muse. This interaction will determine the formation of interpersonal relationships, including friendship and romantic relationships. There are different types of real-world roleplayer information given between their friends and lovers.