Platform Imperialism and the Algorithmic Commodification of Political Voice in Indonesia’s Micro Influencer Economy

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-622-2_10How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Algorithmic Commodification; Commodified Participatory Democracy; Indonesia; Micro-Influencer Economy; Platform Imperialism

Abstract

This study examines how Indonesia’s identifiable micro-influencer economy is commercially intermediated into political communication, using the August–October 2025 TikTok TDPSE (Tanda Daftar Penyelenggara Sistem Elektronik) episode as its case anchor. Extending platform imperialism scholarship and Indonesia’s buzzer-industry literature, which has centered on anonymous cyber troopers, the study asks how this micro-influencer ecosystem operates within algorithmic campaign logics and how its commodification reshapes the democratic public sphere. Using a retrospective archival netnography, this study documents seven Instagram-based cases in which mega- and macro-tier creators publicly disclosed political content offers worth IDR 85–150 million during the August 2025 protests. It also identifies a second, lower-priced mechanism: a creator was offered payment to delete critical content. Findings show that offers followed a standardized commercial template, that all documented cases were publicly refused or remain disputed, and that visible compliance appears to threaten creators’ authenticity-based commercial value — suggesting successfully commodified political voice is structurally motivated toward concealment. These findings substantiate and extend a proposed framework of commodified participatory democracy, revealing suppression, not only production, as a priced commodity, and identifying an evidentiary asymmetry with implications for how researchers and regulators can detect covert political commodification in platform economies.

Copyright

© 2026 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  - Rama Romindo Utomo
AU  - Raden Wahyu Utomo Martianto
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/10/06
TI  - Platform Imperialism and the Algorithmic Commodification of Political Voice in Indonesia’s Micro Influencer Economy
BT  - Proceedings of the International Conference on Communication, Digital Ecosystem, and Society (ICODES 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 135
EP  - 153
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-622-2_10
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-622-2_10
ID  - Utomo2026
ER  -