The Perantau

COVID-19 (Dis)information in Indonesia:

Social Media and Undemocratic Discourse

Information manipulation and fake news have run rampant in Southeast Asia, primarily as a tool for governments to influence public behaviour, polarise societies and draw public support (Chinnasamy, 2019, para. 1). Recently, Indonesia has received criticism in their handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, least of all in how the government has handled the public’s right to information, freedom of expression and opinion. A report by Amnesty International (2020, p. 6) has outlined how there is a lack of transparency in COVID-19 related data, such as the number of health workers infected and other infected contacts, where the government has claimed that withholding information would prevent widespread panic and sustain order. To support the latter, the National Police Headquarters gave the police force clearance to handle ‘hoax spreaders’ and any criticism regarding the President or his administration in their handling of the pandemic by carrying out cyber patrols to monitor online conversation (Amnesty International, 2020, p. 8). The criminalisation of those accused of spreading false or misleading news, as well as those who criticise the government, highlights the issue of whether or not Indonesia is able to hold democratic communication on social media. Controlling ‘truth’ and policing ‘fake’ can open avenues for governments to introduce censorship or exert political control (Chinnasamy, 2019, para. 19). The influence of the Internet on emerging democracies like Indonesia tend to be overlooked in scholarly studies, as these form online public spheres that act as a two-way platform of contestatory politics (Hoskins, 2013, p. 25). This essay will discuss to what extent do the government, ideological state apparatuses and non-state actors affect democratic communication on social media in Indonesia, looking at the case of the dissemination of COVID-19 information and disinformation.

Influence of the Government

The Indonesian government has formed a surveillance state to control and shape public opinion, with the COVID-19 pandemic a significant case in how that control has escalated. Zuboff (2019) defines a surveillance state as a method to assert control over society for the benefit of the politico-business elite by using social media and online networks, challenging the individual freedoms that come with democracy.

The country’s current administration under President Joko Widodo has demonstrated illiberal tendencies shown through the weakening of democracy, civil rights and government transparency (Kusman & Istiqomah, 2021, para. 2). Additionally, in using both new and mainstream media to manipulate public opinion and support, whilst defending the concentration of power, fits Keane’s (2020) theory of ‘new despotism’. The term refers to “a new type of pseudo-democratic government led by rulers skilled in the arts of manipulating and meddling with people’s lives … and much media talk of defending ‘the people’ and ‘the nation’ against ‘domestic subversives’ and foreign enemies’” (Keane, 2020, p. 14). Hasan and Sutherland (2017, p. 187) discuss how in liberal or neoliberal democracies, there tends to be a disjuncture between political processes or government institutions and the present needs of society, where the primary goal of the political elites lean towards capitalistic ends.

However, with the case of Indonesia, the governmental system is engineered to attain and sustain power, in some instances their power over information, instead of material wealth. Essentially it still achieves a surveillance state, but not necessarily driven for the purposes of surveillance capitalism as other literature on social media surveillance, content moderation and the digital economy focus on (see Noble & Roberts, 2019; Roberts, 2019; Zuboff, 2019). By maintaining a facade of democratic elements such as free speech, the Indonesian government’s sophisticated use of social media networks allows them to create a discourse of cultural antagonism, criminalising what they deem opponents of civil society (Kusman & Istiqomah, 2021, para. 24). Those that remain are then governed by fear and self-censorship, thus maintaining an image of positive public opinion in the digital space.

A more optimistic view of government presence on social media can be seen in the government’s COVID-19 Task Force (SatGas COVID-19) activity on Instagram under the username @satgascovid19.id, carrying out a socialisation program to combat disinformation and a medium to deliver government-related mandates or ‘verified’ information. Prasetyo, Amrullah and Endri (2021, p. 317) found that the account effectively provided COVID-19-related information, such as daily updates on case numbers and government policies. However, although the information provided was helpful and there was generally positive public sentiment, people were still hesitant in paying attention to the information provided, partially due in part to the inability for @satgascovid19.id to maintain a two-way communicative relationship (Prasetyo, Amrullah & Endri, 2021, p. 317). Although this does not directly fit the description of new despotism or the surveillance state, it does, however, support the argument of controlling a government-sponsored narrative in the digital space. Within this framework, the way online conversations develop does not develop organically, which means it does not allow public discourse to go through a democratic process of discussion without intervention from the government. As McChesney (2013, p. 63) argues, a free-market media system is fundamental for a healthy democratic culture, where it is essential to remain unbiased and objective in information reportage; beyond government influence and intervention. Social media activity in Indonesia, especially during this pandemic period, has gone against that, aligning more with a version of new-despotic rule. Thus, by creating a surveillance state, the government adversely affects democratic communication on social media by maintaining a state-sponsored narrative of COVID-19.

Ideological State Apparatuses

The Indonesian government reinforces their influence over COVID-19-related discourse on social media through the use of ideological state apparatuses. Althusser (1994, p. 111) developed the term ‘ideological state apparatus’ to denote institutions such as education, churches, family, media, trade unions, and law, which were formally outside state control, but which served to transmit the values of the state. It interpellates the individuals affected by them and to maintain order in a society, above all to reproduce capitalist relations of production (Althuser, 1994, p. 111). The Jokowi administration have used some of these institutions to varying degrees and for different purposes, some of which was to combat disinformation, suppress criticism against the government or to uphold a certain narrative in the digital space.

Indonesian police have used the Electronic Information and Transactions Law to prosecute Indonesian activists who have been critical of how the government has handled the coronavirus pandemic, charged with insulting authorities (A’yun & Mudhoffir, 2020, para. 22). Despite it initially being justified to combat COVID-19 disinformation, the National Police chief General Idham Azis has also since included monitoring the development of the situation and opinions expressed on social media (A’yun & Mudhoffir, 2020, para. 25). As A’yun and Mudhoffir argue (2020, para. 22), the pandemic has allowed for the politico-business elites to propel their capitalistic ambitions further and increase their power and money, exploiting Indonesia’s illiberal nature of relatively loose laws and pervasive corruption.

Social media influencers have also been mobilised as a form of an ideological state apparatus, becoming a tool to disseminate government communications and to uphold positive public sentiment of the government’s handling of the pandemic. Senft (2008) first define people who rise to fame within the digital space are better described as microcelebrities. Abidin (2015, para. 44)  builds upon this and outlines that social media influencers garner large followings on social media through different factors: narration of their personal lives; engaging with their followers; monetising their followings and making personalised advertorials for a fee. Within the context of an ideological state apparatus, social media influencers achieve the capitalistic goals that governments are unable or are prevented from pursuing.

As Rakhmani and Permana (2020, para. 6) discuss, celebrities and public figures were invited to the presidential palace with the purpose of “disseminating government policies regarding COVID-19 with the aim of maintaining positive public sentiment.” Sadasri (2020) did a Twitter content analysis on two of these social media influencers, Dr. Tirta and Rachel Vennya, the former a microcelebrity general practitioner and the latter a brand endorser of various online shops, regarding the content of risk communication about COVID-19 and the extent it mirrors government policies and messages as aligned by the National Disaster Management Authority. The study found that both influencers primarily tweeted messages about mutual cooperation and promoting “a culture of clean and healthy living” in how the individual should behave during the pandemic, mostly citing Indonesia’s Ministry of Health and the National Disaster Management Authority (Sadasri, 2020, p. 68). This management of public sentiment closely aligns with official statements and direct communications on central and national government websites, notably the number of people who have recovered from COVID-19 instead of infected or fatality numbers (Rakhmani and Permana, 2020, para. 6).

Social media influencers who were openly collaborating with government institutions are understandably protected against the Electronic Information and Transactions Law articles that were used to charge people of sowing public discontent. The messages they convey are government-sponsored, thus forming highly curated and monitored discussions online. In surveilling COVID-19 discourse on social media, free speech has become an abstract construct in disseminating government policies and information. The concept of new despotism extends to the ideological state apparatus, whereby the government still controls, although not directly, with people lives, against the domestic subversives. Ideological state apparatuses greatly affect democratic communication on social media, where in reality that communication is not entirely democratic.

Non-state Actors

The spread of information amongst the public relies heavily on the social networks that exist on social media platforms. Social networks are defined as clusters of users with similar interests maintaining reciprocal two-way communication (Myers et al., 2014, p. 493). These online communities are generally characterised by “contentious self-governance, voluntary participation and veneration of status-holding and power-wielding community leaders”, whereby although there are no legal or formal bindings of community membership, they do form conversational clusters (Roberts, 2019, p. 15). In that sense, social networks are non-state actors, though by approaching it from the perspective of the ‘political economy of the media’, we can understand the political role they play in the everyday life. Mosco (2008, p. 1) describes the term ‘political economy’ as the power relations between “the production, distribution and consumption of resources”, in this case, communication or information as these resources. It also denotes the “internal organisation of social group members and the process of adapting to change”, which are political in nature, controlling the relationships within a community and survival processes through which information is controlled (Mosco, 2008, p. 1). Although they are not part of the formal political institution, they serve their own political motivations when it comes to navigating discourse in the digital space

Angeline, Safitri and Luthfia (2020, p. 362) found that the vast majority of tweets in Indonesia between January to April 2020 relating to COVD-19 misinformation spread was about community spread – i.e. the location of cases and the perpetrators of the virus spread. As many as 31% of those tweets were completely fabricated, 24% contained misleading content, 20% had manipulated content and 16% had false context (Angeline, Safitri & Luthfia, 2020, p. 362). Angeline, Safitri and Luthfia (2020, p. 364) discuss that although the motivation for spreading false information has not been defined, they usually contain politically-driven content, such as targeting specific groups or blaming specific people for the spread of the coronavirus. Social networks can be isolated or rather polarised over time because of the algorithmic nature of social media platforms, such as filter bubbles causing selective exposure. Ali and Eriyanto (2021, p. 280) found that in their study of Indonesian COVID-19 hashtag conversation chains on Twitter, specific social networks – in their case pro-Jokowi and anti-Jokowi of how his administration has handled the pandemic – would only interact with other users who shared the same political views and message content. Jokowi supporters tend to only consume positive information about his administration’s handling of the pandemic and ignore criticism and other negative information, and vice versa (Ali and Eriyanto, 2021, p. 281). The discussion and dissemination of COVID-19 related information then is not democratic, as increasingly polarised social networks take shape and are not conducive to democratic communication. As a byproduct of unreliable sources and the discrepancy of COVID-related data online, prominent voluntary civil society groups have emerged such as KawalCOVID19 and LaporCOVID19 on Twitter. They have organised themselves into a kind of loose digital social network to monitor COVID-related health policies and practices, tabulating and cross-checking COVID-19 case counts on provincial and central government websites to show data discrepancies (Rakhmani & Permana, 2020, para. 24). Their competency and willingness to cross-check COVID-19 data not only benefits those who have poor digital literacy, but journalists and media outlets are also able to use their data to provide a better understanding of the pandemic than what is available to them on government websites, or at least what is propagated directly by government figureheads. Both Twitter accounts attempt to facilitate democratic communication on social media by filling the gap that is the lack of a central authority of information and fact-checking. Thus, social networks strongly affect democratic communication on social media. As evident with Indonesia’s COVID-19 misinformation issue, public sentiment can shift from one extreme to another.

Conclusion

Democratic communication in Indonesia is heavily contested, where different actors with different motives and methods affect which information is spread and consumed. By looking at how COVID-19 information and disinformation was spread in Indonesia’s digital space, some actors were conducive but others produced adverse effects on democratic communication. The government pursued a surveillance state, monitoring conversations on social media regarding the pandemic but also in how the government has dealt with the pandemic. They disseminate official COVID-19 related data, however, it was proven that even government data tend to be unreliable. The ideological state apparatus was instrumental in acting as a bridge between the government and the people, although not to more democratic effects. Social media influencers are not generally considered as an ideological state apparatus, but in the case of the COVID-19 pandemic, they were sponsored by the government to promote government policies and announcements, as can be seen with their Twitter activity mirroring central and national government messages. The social networks of non-state actors became a central focus of how COVID-19 disinformation has circulated, as for one not only are they politically motivated in the content of their disinformation, but also user agency has afforded civil society groups to use social media as a way to combat disinformation and a way to hold the government accountable.

The implications of this essay signal that the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the democratic regression of Indonesia’s online public sphere, facilitating increasingly polarised social networks and allowing fake news – whether it be a mistake or done intentionally – to prosper. The wide scope of this essay is a limitation in the research provided, as more in-depth analysis can still be done with either of the three factors of government, the ideological state apparatus or non-state actors on how they affect democratic communication on social media. It is evident that each aspect heavily influences public discourse on social media and this also applies beyond the scope of the COVID-19 pandemic. More research can also be done in analysing if similar patterns emerge in other neighbouring and Southeast Asian countries.

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Originally submitted as coursework for the Bachelor of Arts, University of Melbourne