Reactive Democracy: State Disinformation, Polarization, and the Double-Edged Sword of Social Media in Indonesia

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-485-3_18How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Reactive Democracy; Social Media; Buzzers

Abstract

The proliferation of social media has fundamentally reshaped Indonesia’s democratic landscape, presenting both unprecedented opportunities for civic engagement and significant perils for institutional integrity. This paper provides a critical analysis of this dual impact, arguing that these platforms have facilitated the emergence of a “reactive democracy.“ This model is characterized by a policymaking process that is increasingly untethered from long-term, evidence-based deliberation and is instead oriented towards performing responsiveness to ephemeral, algorithmically amplified online sentiment. Central to this analysis is the institutionalization of state-sponsored disinformation, wherein government entities allocate public funds to digital influencers (‘buzzers’) to manufacture consensus and marginalize dissent. This strategy results in a form of “epistemic pollution,” systematically degrading civic discourse and eroding the foundational trust necessary for public deliberation. Concurrently, the paper examines how the inherent technological architecture of social media, driven by engagement-based algorithmic curation, exacerbates political polarization by creating ideological “filter bubbles” and “echo chambers”. However, the analysis avoids a purely techno-pessimistic conclusion by acknowledging the democratizing potential of these same platforms. Social media has significantly lowered barriers to entry into the public sphere, empowering historically marginalized communities to articulate grievances and mobilize for collective action. Ultimately, the paper contends that the benefits and harms of this digital ecosystem are unevenly distributed due to a multi-dimensional “digital divide”. This divide, encompassing disparities in technological access and digital literacy, amplifies pre-existing socioeconomic inequalities, producing a skewed simulacrum of public opinion that challenges the promise of genuine democratic inclusivity.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Nora Titahning Ayudha
AU  - Reno Eza Mahendra
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/11/14
TI  - Reactive Democracy: State Disinformation, Polarization, and the Double-Edged Sword of Social Media in Indonesia
BT  - Proceedings of the International Conference on Contemporary Sociology and Educational Transformation (ICCSET  2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 170
EP  - 177
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-485-3_18
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-485-3_18
ID  - Ayudha2025
ER  -