ABSTRAK
Tesis ini merupakan sebuah studi mengenai teori spiral of silence yang dilakukan dengan mengamati perilaku seseorang dalam melakukan sensor diri dan aktivitas politik di media sosial. Seperti kita ketahui, media sosial belakangan ini telah menjadi wadah pengungkapan pendapat politik yang nyaman bagi penggunanya. Kondisi ini kemudian membuat penulis bertujuan untuk meneliti eksistensi dari efek spiral of silence di kalangan pengguna media sosial. Tesis ini dilakukan dengan menggunakan metodologi penelitian kuantitatif melalui penyebaran kuesioner secara online pada kalangan mahasiswa yang tergabung sebagai pengurus harian Badan Eksekutif Mahasiswa tingkat fakultas di kampus UI. Data yang berhasil dihimpun kemudian diolah dengan menggunakan perhitungan statistik. Hasil dari penelitian tesis ini adalah dapat dibuktikan bahwa efek spiral of silence masih berlaku di kalangan pengguna media sosial Indonesia, di mana mereka masih berupaya untuk melakukan penyesuaian sosial dengan tidak memperlihatkan pendapat mereka atas suatu peristiwa politik di media sosial Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Line, dan Whatsapp.

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ABSTRACT
This thesis is a study about spiral of silence theory in social media, with the concentration to willingness to self censorship and political posting activity behavior. The condition that showed social media has become a convenient medium to show political opinion of its users had pumped the couriosity of the author to know about the existence of spiral of silence effect on this kind of digital media. As one of the popular mass media effects theory, the spiral of silence has the fear of social isolation as the key variable that drives spiral effect. This thesis is done by using quantitative research through the dissemination of cross sectional design questionnaire online. The questionnaire which contains questions about the Zaadit 39 s Yellow Card event which became a popular agenda in social media was disseminated to a group of students who were members of the daily board of the Student Council in Universitas Indonesia. The collected data then processed using statistical calculations. The result of this thesis is that it can be proven that the spiral of silence effect is still prevalent among Indonesian social media users, which they did not want to show their opinion about a political issue on social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Line, and Whatsapp. Nevertheless, the authors will conduct research conducted on different populations that will be able to produce different findings, given that this research is conducted on respondents who came from mass affluent backgrounds.