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oko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo is the most-mentioned politician on Twitter, but, surprisingly, the Jakarta governor was not the most likeable potential presidential candidate on the social media outlet, a study says.

The study, which was conducted by Singapore-based Purengage from July 1 to Aug. 31, monitored 161 local news websites and activities in the Twittersphere. It shows that Gita Wirjawan led the field in likability on Twitter, with an aggregate index of 1.34, ahead of other possible hopefuls Dahlan Iskan, Jokowi and Prabowo Subiyanto, who recorded scores of 1.24, 1.03 and 0.76, respectively.

Purengage used special software to identify the top potential presidential hopefuls on the web. Gita and Dahlan were included in the field as they were the top two hopefuls in the Democratic Party'€™s convention.

The software analyzed the nature of news stories as well as comments on news portals and Twitter and would automatically score minus-three points for a negative sentiment, one point for neutral, and three points for positive sentiment to determine a potential candidate'€™s favorability index or score.

Gusrizal '€œDheve'€ Algamar of Purengage said in a press conference that Jokowi had a low favorability index on Twitter because there was probably an equal number of people praising and hating him or his policies online.

'€œThis could be dangerous for Jokowi if he cannot manage negative public sentiment and will be an opportunity for Gita, who still needs to catch up in terms of popularity,'€ he said.

Dheve said that Jokowi remained the most-mentioned politician on the Internet, including on Twitter.

During the survey period, Jokowi was mentioned an average 694 times per day on online news and 16,542 times per day on Twitter. Dahlan came in second with a total of 152 mentions on online news and 3,285 mentions on Twitter, while Gita was third with 100 mentions and 688 mentions on online news and Twitter, respectively.

On Aug. 26, the day after Jokowi attended the Metallica concert, the governor was mentioned 39,293 times on online news sites. Meanwhile, Gita, who is also the Indonesian Badminton Association (PBSI) chairman, had his heyday on Twitter when the Indonesian badminton team won the 2013 Badminton World Federation (BWF) World Championships for men'€™s doubles and for mixed doubles on Aug. 11.

On that day, Gita'€™s official Twitter account @Gwirjawan was mentioned 12,946 times, more than any other politician'€™s. That same day, Jokowi'€™s Twitter account @jokowi_do2 recorded no more than 2,000 mentions.

Philips Vermonte, a researcher with the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), said that the study was a good tool to measure popularity on the Internet, but could not be deemed as an effective tool to measure electability, as it only monitored those who were online.

'€œHowever, this kind of analysis could probably be an effective tool to predict the electability of candidates in the next five or 10 years when the use of social media will be massive,'€ he added. (koi)