Some context
Indonesia, the world’s third largest democracy, faces a trend of democratic regression in recent years under the Joko Widodo administration, seeing similar patterns of increased State power and control unseen since the fall of the authoritarian New Order regime in 1998, says Natalie Sambhi, executive director at Verve Research and nonresident fellow at research group Brookings.
This year, Freedom House rates Indonesia as ‘partly free’, scoring 59/100 on the Global Freedom Index. We see a decline from 2022 where Indonesia scored 58, 61 in 2020 and 65 in 2017.
More specifically on internet freedom, Freedom House rates Indonesia at 49/100 in 2022, with Reporters Without Borders ranking the country at 117 of 180 on the World Press Index.
As of January 2023, reports show that there were 212.9 million internet users in Indonesia and an internet penetration rate of 77% of the total population, 167 million of those being social media users.
From journalists covering alleged coruption, Papuan pro-independence activists, to criticising the government on their handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, the State have often used the law to curb dissenting voices.
Read more about my breakdown on Indonesia’s freedom of digital expression here.
The Jokowi administration has increasingly honed their skills in media manipulation, especially the sophisticated use of online media and social media networks to create discourse of cultural antagonism and to help build public approval.
With influences from the socio-political elite and pro-government social media influencers, it becomes even harder for the Indonesian public to participate in any productive democratic dialogue.
For a crash course on the Indonesian media ecosystem, the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) has partnered with Perkumpulan untuk Pemilu dan Demokrasi (Perludem) to go into more depth on their Youtube channel with their series “What’s Up With Our Media”.
So where does transnationalism and social media come in?
In a joint report by the Reuters Institute and the University of Oxford, with 68% of Indonesians consuming news from social platforms, such as WhatsApp, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram, and the majority of consumers under 24 years old, the digital space plays an even more critical role in democratic dialogue.
Existing academic literature suggests that those living abroad have long been invested and involved with the politics of their origin country, as social media allows them to have more frequent and closer contact with home.
Academics have also suggested that it is precisely because of this distance that transnational communities are more emboldened to develop critical opinions of their ‘sending’ nations, state leaders, and goals, feeling safe from any potential harrasment or persecution.
The Indonesian diasporic community runs parallel, with the Indonesian Diaspora Network an integral part in engaging with Indonesian politics from abroad.
Indonesia’s founding fathers had a prolific history when they studied in the Netherlands during the era of Dutch occupation, establishing the first Overseas Indonesian Students Association in the 1920s, which will go on to define modern-day Indonesia.
Nowadays, the Overseas Indonesian Students’ Association Alliance (PPI Dunia) continues that degree of political activism by demanding more of the Indonesian government and working with the country’s House of Representatives, inviting them to their 15 International Symposium in Amsterdam, the Netherlands later this year.
As Indonesia’s online media ecosystem faces continued encroachment on digital expression, those living abroad now have a greater responsibility to aid in democratic communication channels between like-minded peers and those back home.
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