Strategy of Social Movement by the Community of Football Supporters amidst Pandemic Era

Among the government regulations towards health protocol in pandemic time that leads to the restriction of collective activities of civil society organizations, Aremania football supporters have performed more actions to insist on achieving their objectives. The objective is to remove dual managements in Arema football club in Malang city. This study aims at revealing the ongoing efforts of Aremania to maintain their social movements and some changes made to adjust the current pandemic situation. The study implements the concept of social movement and qualitative method to explore the data. The finding of this investigation unveils the more massive movements demonstrated by Aremania and it is based on several facts. These attempts are committed as a strategy to negotiate the government’s policy on avoiding contact with crowd in the middle of pandemic. Aremania negotiates the policy by conducting collective action in social media and shopping mall in hope that they will not face any obstacles in accomplishing the goal from the government. The strategy has a purpose to gain attention from both Aremania and the two managements of Arema to work on the union of Arema Indonesia and Arema Football Club. To conclude, the findings of the study present the changes of social movement in terms of forms and instruments in order to reach the goal amidst the pandemic era.