#makansiangdubes: Gaining Foreign’s Affections through Localized Contents

The effect of Japan nation branding in Indonesia is strong. Indonesian youths and teenagers are attracted to tokusatsu, manga, anime, figures, brands, and J-Pop which make them easily accept and are familiar with pop-culture and kawaii culture from Japan. The development of Japanese creative industries and internet media also reinforce Japanese cultural impacts in Indonesia, especially because Indonesian youths love to spend their pastime accessing social media. Taking this as a good opportunity, Masafumi Ishii, the Japanese Ambassador for Indonesia tries to present the images of Japanese to be closer and accepted by Indonesian youths through #makansiangdubes. Utilizing Instagram @jpnambsindonesia as the platform, Ishii frequently posts his pictures enjoying Indonesian dishes he is eating while making kawaii or cute poses for his followers, holding Japanese and Indonesian cultural arts and brands, and doing his official activities as ambassador. This attracts his followers whose majority are teenagers and youngsters to give likes and leave positive comments to express how they adore his kawaii traits. The methodology adopted signification concepts and semiotics analysis on contents. The analysis on comments explains how the images affect the audience’s affective, cognitive, and behavioral responses. Among all comments, affections comprise the majority.


INTRODUCTION
The delivery of Japanese popular culture brings great impacts and gives large contributions in promoting their images to foreign public. Stated by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, the country has implemented some strategies to create their positive images by introducing a wide range of Japanese cultures from traditional to contemporary, animation, manga, fashion, architecture, and design to promote Japan's various charms for foreign residents (2017).
For Indonesian teenagers and youths, Japanese popular culture has strong exposures in their lives. Starting from the 1990s popular cultures like manga, anime and their related merchandise, and music have remarkably penetrated the young audience's lives with their entertaining features. Related study also indicates that there are many Indonesian teenagers and youths attracted to Japanese animation films, Japanese pop music, brands like food, and Japanese comic books (Surajaya, 2010). This is how Indonesian youths first accepted Japan and their popular cultures.
To connect with a wider audience, especially foreign publics, Japanese government maintains their proactive communication by providing information through domestic media (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2017). The communication strategies involve a three-pillar approach that includes (1) conveying Japan's views, policies, and initiatives, (2) sharing Japan's rich and varied attractiveness, (3) cultivating understanding and support for Japan (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2019). One example of these strategies is the effort of Japanese Ambassador for Indonesia, Masafumi Ishii, to connect and interact with Indonesian youths by utilizing a social media platform that is going to be discussed in this study.  (Lestari, Suryana, Mulyana, & Hidayat, 2019). It helps to serve its function as an information sharing platform. Content in social media has become a vital source of information about an object (can be an individual, a product, or a place). People even find news faster in social media. Based on a survey, almost all teenagers and youngsters in Indonesia access social media for pastime activity (Luthfia, 2019) that fulfills the function of social media for entertainment.
According to a study, young people in Indonesia respond to posts that bring feelings of pleasure and arousal (Kusumasondjaja & Tjiptono, 2019). They tend to favor posts that suit their interests and make them happy and excited to try something.
The 'usefulness' and 'playfulness' features of social media like Instagram affect their intention to use it (Kusyanti et al., 2018). Not only to communicate, people now also use social media platforms like Instagram to establish their image (Liu & Suh, 2018). People easily perceive images from what they usually see or experience, so intense exposures to certain objects in social media is vital in shaping ones' perceptions about the objects. There are two important definitions of images that are trying to be discussed in this study. The first is image as identity which refers to distinctive characteristics and outward expression of a brand (Malmelin & Moisander, 2014). This defines image as identity that is portrayed and produced to the public. The second definition is related to receptive feature of image.
According to Grunig (2009) (Gao & Feng, 2016). It is considered necessary to put pictures that arise interest and verbal description that can easily be understood by the audience and Instagram is largely used for branding activity since it offers those complete features in one platform. This explains why Instagram as the 4 th leading social network serves optimal functions for branding.
Branding in this context refers to the efforts of individuals developing a distinctive public image for commercial gain or cultural capital (Khamis, Ang, & Welling, 2017 (Kim & Johnson, 2016). Contents act as stimuli that trigger the audience as organisms to make responses. In social media, people prefer stimuli they are often exposed to and prefer those fostering positive affection that leads to favorable attitudes toward the stimulus (Becknell, Wilson, & Baird, 1963;Ruggieri & Boca, 2013;Harrison, 1977). In order to see this relation, one should see the engage ment of the audience with the audience that will impact their affective, cognitive, and behavioral attitudes if the image is successfully communicated (Yan, 2011). The audience will show positive emotional feedback (feelings), recall what they know about the brand, perceive the value of the brand, and feel triggered to do some actions.

RESEARCH METHOD
The first step conducted was select-

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
In order to see the impacts of image branding, first we need to understand the images portrayed and produced in the posts.
As for its nature, the posts of #makansiangdubes use the nature of Instagram as its media. Instagram, as a social media, uses photos or pictures, or sometimes videos, to inform something to our social circle. This remarks the points of analysis start from its nature as a press photograph: a photograph posted in public media to inform something.
We can say that its purpose is not just a virtual blog of his lunch, made to satisfy his own historical accord, but to inform something to a certain society.

a. Creating Images in Social Media
As a press photograph, this posts are formed by (1) a source of emission, which is the ambassador, the embassy's staff, and its ideology; (2) a channel of transmission, which is the Instagram, and (3) a point of reception, which is of course the youths as the post's segment. Only by grasping the segmented receptor of these photographs, the photograph and the text following it can be discussed. Barthes (1977: 17) said that all these 'imitative' arts comprises two messages: a denoted message, which is the analogon itself, and a connoted message, which is the manner in which the society to a certain extent communicates what it thinks of it. When the photographs appear to the youth as the segmented receptor, the youth bring the certain 'culture' to evaluate thephotographs-in a different way than the evaluation of other photographs of an oldman eating a lunch. This certain 'culture' can be found when we look at 10 of his most-liked posts (above 17,000 likes). First, we need to take a look on the structures and features of the posts.
To discuss a complex message infused in those posts, it is insufficient to conclude it only with the discussion of the intrinsic aspect of the photograph. We have to look at these posts as a whole process of intentional signification, through the nature of the channel of transmission itself: Instagram. There exists not only a photograph, not only the symbolic message, but it is always accompanied with texts. There are two types of text existing side by side with the photographs. The first one is the texts offered by the Instagram algorithm-when we follow some hashtags and we will be offered other related posts attached with certain hashtags, or when we follow some accounts and we will be offered to follow similar accounts. The position of these texts is always above the photographs, similar to the newspaper's headline or just the newspaper's company name. The second texts are the texts offered by the account or creator itself.
These texts appear below the photographs, and sometimes tend to give the photograph an additional meaning. Barthes (1977: 36) called it the literal message, as opposed to the previous symbolic message-the image itself. The symbolic message, then, can be divided into two-folds, like discussed above, the denoted message and the connoted message. The viewer of the image receives at one and the same time the perceptual message and the cultural message. The task now is thus to reconsider each type of message to understand the overall structure of the image. It is important to explore the final inter-relationship of those three messages: the linguistic message, the denoted image, and the connoted image.
The first message is the linguistic message. In regard to the two-folds of image, there are two functions of the text: anchorage and relay. These two functions of linguistic message can co-exist, but the dominance depends on the work. The first function, the anchorage function of the texts works as a denominative, to recourse the meaning of the object (the image) to its nomenclature. Anchorage is a control, bearing a responsibility for the use of the message. It helps the receptor to choose the correct level of perception, causing him to avoid some interpretation and receive others (Barthes, 1977: 39-41). This function can be found on the first kind of texts, located above the photographs, acting like a headline in the newspaper. In these Instagram posts, the text above the photographs is always its account name, @jpnambsindonesia. In some other case, when some people The relationship between the second message-the denoted image-and the third image-the connoted image is mutual. Barthes (1977: 51) said that connotation is only a system that can only be defined in paradigmatic terms; on the other side, iconic denotation is only syntagm, associating elements without any system. Here  Affective responses towards the items (Indonesian) 11 3 Affective responses towards the items (Japanese) 4 4 Cognitive responses towards Japan 19 5 Behaviour responses towards Japan 3 (Source: data analysis by author) The  There are two types of acceptance and affection found in the comments. Japan. This also characterizes Japan's power to maintain diplomacy with foreign publics through media culture and creative industries (Iwabuchi, 2019;Oyama, 2015). Therefore, such comments are possible to occur considering the strong branding effects of Japan in Indonesia. Various studies also identify the effects of kawaii pop-culture that generate liking or interest in enhancing the image of the nation (Heng, 2014;Iwabuchi, 2015).
Surprisingly, the posts also trigger thoughts on behaviour. Found among the comments given, some audiences also men- Ishii as an individual who is considered cute and loves Indonesian foods. From the discussion on the affective, cognitive, and behavioural responses, such image representation can also be viewed as one contributing factor in generating acceptance, likes, interests, and to some extent trust about Japan which will be discussed in the next research.