Digital Activism of Rempang Community and Solidarity against Rempang Eco-City Project

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-505-8_8How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Digital activism; public space; Habermas; Rempang Eco-City; social movement

Abstract

The conflict caused by the Rempang Eco City Project has transformed a local land dispute into a national issue intensively mediated through digital platforms. This study aims to analyze how digital activism led by the Rempang community and its solidarity alliance functions as a digital public sphere from the perspective of Jürgen Habermas. Using a qualitative approach and discourse analysis of digital content, press releases, and media coverage, this study evaluates the extent to which the saverempang hashtag digital space meets the ideal criteria of a Habermas public sphere: inclusivity, autonomy, and rational-critical debate. The analysis shows that digital activism successfully created an inclusive counter-public, giving voice to marginalized indigenous communities and building broad national solidarity. The movement effectively generated a counter-narrative centered on human rights and cultural heritage preservation, significantly challenging the narrative of state developmentalism. However, this public sphere is not entirely ideal. Its autonomy is fragile, operating under the threat of state coercion and attempts to delegitimize it through the label hoax. Furthermore, while elements of rational debate are present through investigative reports and legal arguments from civil society organizations, the mobilizing power of the movement relies heavily on viral emotional content, rather than purely rational-critical deliberation. In conclusion, digital activism of Rempang community and solidarity embodies a powerful yet imperfect digital public sphere, highlighting both the democratic potential and the vulnerability of the digital arena in the fight for social justice in contemporary Indonesia.

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  - Umi Ma’rufah
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/12/12
TI  - Digital Activism of Rempang Community and Solidarity against Rempang Eco-City Project
BT  - Proceedings of the 7th Open Society Conference 2025 (OSC 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 84
EP  - 95
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-505-8_8
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-505-8_8
ID  - Ma’rufah2025
ER  -