Buzzer Politics in Indonesia (2)

The case of buzzers spreading false accusations of blasphemy against former Vice President Jusuf Kalla illustrates just how pernicious and destructive digital disinformation can be when religion is instrumentalised for political purposes. The cruelty lies not only in the personal defamation of a respected statesman but also in the way such fabricated narratives exploit religious sensitivities to inflame public anger. Because blasphemy is an issue that touches deeply held beliefs, false claims of this nature are particularly potent in mobilising outrage, and buzzers deliberately weaponise that emotional resonance to destabilise political opponents or delegitimise figures who are otherwise seen as moderate and conciliatory.

The impact of these campaigns is twofold. On the one hand, they corrode trust in democratic institutions by making citizens doubt the integrity of leaders and the fairness of political competition. On the other, they fracture social cohesion by sowing suspicion and hostility among communities, turning religion into a divisive rather than unifying force. Scholars such as Marcus Mietzner have shown that the use of buzzers in Indonesia has normalised toxic practices in political communication, while Fossati and Kawamura highlight how digital disinformation—often infused with religious rhetoric—functions as an “authoritarian innovation” that undermines pluralism. In this context, the false accusations against Jusuf Kalla are emblematic of a broader trend: the deliberate manipulation of religious sentiment through digital channels to achieve short‑term political gains at the expense of long‑term democratic health.

The cruelty, therefore, is not only in the personal harm inflicted on Jusuf Kalla’s reputation but also in the collective damage done to Indonesia’s democratic fabric. By exploiting religion in this way, buzzers erode both the moral integrity of politics and the trust that citizens place in democratic processes.

4.2 The 2017 Jakarta Gubernatorial Election and SARA-Based Polarisation

The 2017 Jakarta Pilkada stands as one of the most dramatic episodes in the history of buzzer deployment in Indonesia. The contest between Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (Ahok) and Anies Baswedan was marked by the mass dissemination of content laden with SARA (ethnicity, religion, race, and inter-group relations) sensitivities across social media, with the suspected involvement of organised buzzer networks.

Research by Mietzner (2020), in Populist Azariah: Jokowi's Long Decade in Power and the Threat to Democracy and related articles, analyses how the blasphemy allegations brought against Ahok were artificially amplified by digital networks exploiting religious sentiment as a political weapon. Mietzner argues that this was not spontaneous organic mobilisation, but a structured and premeditated operation.

These findings are corroborated by Fossati and Kawamura (2020), in their article Islam, Partisan Identity and Electoral Behaviour in Indonesia, which demonstrates how religious narratives were instrumentalised through digital channels—including buzzers and messaging applications such as WhatsApp—to influence electoral choices. This process not only shaped the outcome of the Pilkada but left deep and lasting scars upon the social fabric of Jakarta and, more broadly, of Indonesian society.

4.3 Buzzers in the 2019 General Election: Scalability and Institutionalisation

If the 2017 Pilkada represented a large-scale experimental deployment, the 2019 simultaneous general elections (Presidential and Legislative) constituted the arena in which the use of buzzers became institutionalised. The contest between Joko Widodo and Prabowo Subianto was accompanied by massive and organised cyber operations from both camps.

A study by DW Akademie (2020), Media Use and Information Literacy in Indonesia, found that more than 60 per cent of respondents across various Indonesian cities reported having received information that subsequently proved to be false, the great majority of it via WhatsApp and Facebook—the two platforms that served as the primary theatre of buzzer activity.

Research by Juditha (2020), published in the journal Pekommas, analysed patterns of disinformation dissemination during the 2019 elections and identified patterns consistent with coordinated buzzer activity: high posting volumes within short timeframes, coordinated hashtag usage, and inorganic interaction patterns. These findings accord with the detection methodology developed by Ferrara et al. (2016) in their influential paper, The Rise of Social Bots published in Communications of the ACM.

 

4.4 Industrial Context: The Buzzer Ecosystem in Indonesia

One of the most alarming aspects of the buzzer phenomenon in Indonesia is the degree to which it has become institutionalised. Drone Emprit, the social media analytics platform founded by Ismail Fahmi, has extensively documented how buzzer operations in Indonesia function as a structured industry. Fahmi (2019), in various Drone Emprit reports, demonstrates the existence of networks of accounts operating in a coordinated fashion, exhibiting behaviour indicative of centralised management.

Drone Emprit's findings are corroborated by the Oxford Internet Institute. Bradshaw, Neudert, and Howard (2019), in Government Troops and Political Operatives, classify Indonesia as one of the countries with a high level of computational influence operation capacity, with the active involvement of both state and private actors.

The buzzer industry in Indonesia does not operate in a vacuum. It is connected to an ecosystem of digital consultants, opinion research firms, and even mainstream PR agencies offering 'digital reputation management' services as a euphemism for buzzword operations. This indicates that the problem in Indonesia is not merely one of rogue individuals, but of the institutionalisation of opinion manipulation as a practice deeply embedded within the political communications industry.

 

4.5 Buzzer Attacks on Press Freedom and Critical Voices

One of the most dangerous manifestations of the buzzer phenomenon in Indonesia is its deployment against journalists, activists, and academics. The Koalisi Lawan Buzzer (Anti-Buzzer Coalition), formed by various civil society organisations, has documented hundreds of cases in which individuals were subjected to coordinated attacks on social media following the publication of critical reporting or commentary directed at those in power.

Reporters Without Borders ranked Indonesia 108th out of 180 countries in its 2022 World Press Freedom Index, citing organised digital intimidation as one of the primary contributing factors. Research by Wahyudi (2021), in his doctoral thesis at the University of Melbourne, analyses how buzzer attacks against investigative journalists in Indonesia produce a demonstrable chilling effect: editorial boards engage in self-censorship, sources become reluctant to speak on record, and journalists contemplate abandoning the profession.

The most egregious cases include coordinated attacks against journalists covering corruption at the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) and in independent media, environmental activists opposing large infrastructure projects, and minority religious figures advocating for peace amidst sectarian polarisation. The consistent patterns observed across these cases—coordinated hashtag campaigns, rapid amplification, and suspicious account profiles—point unmistakably to planned buzzer operations.

4.6 Regulation and Law Enforcement: A Troubling Lacuna

Indonesia possesses several legal instruments that could, in principle, be deployed to address buzzer activity, including the Electronic Information and Transactions Law (UU ITE, Law No. 11 of 2008, as amended) and various regulations concerning the dissemination of hoaxes. However, Sukma Ridwan (2020), in his analysis published in Jurnal Hukum dan Peradilan, finds that the implementation of these instruments has been profoundly selective: they have been used far more frequently to criminalise criticism of the government than to prosecute buzzers who disseminate pro-establishment disinformation.

This paradox reflects precisely what Levitsky and Ziblatt (2018), in their seminal work How Democracies Die, identify as a hallmark of contemporary democratic backsliding: the employment of legitimate legal instruments for anti-democratic ends. When the UU ITE is more commonly wielded to silence dissent than to protect the public information sphere, buzzer activity goes increasingly unchecked, deprived of any meaningful legal disincentive.

V. ETHICAL DIMENSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR DEMOCRACY

 

5.1 Buzzers as a Violation of Public Epistemic Autonomy

From a philosophical standpoint, the deployment of buzzers constitutes a violation of the epistemic autonomy of the public—the right of individuals to form beliefs and preferences based on unmanipulated information. Christiano (2008), in The Constitution of Equality: Democratic Authority and Its Limits, argues that democratic legitimacy is contingent upon the capacity of citizens to participate in genuine public deliberation. Buzzers, by manipulating the informational landscape, systematically undermine the prerequisite conditions for such legitimacy.

Habermas (1984), in the theory of communicative action and the conception of the public sphere elaborated in The Theory of Communicative Action and The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, stipulates that legitimate deliberation must be free from strategic domination and manipulation. Buzzers are the antithesis of this ideal: they introduce a strategic logic (the achievement of ends through manipulation) into a sphere that ought to be governed by communicative rationality (the achievement of consensus through honest argumentation).

 

5.2 Systemic Implications for the Quality of Democracy

Diamond (2015), in his influential article in the Journal of Democracy, warned of a global 'democratic recession' in which various democracies experience an erosion of quality even whilst formally retaining electoral procedures. The buzzer phenomenon is precisely one of the mechanisms of such erosion: it enables democracy to appear normal at the surface—elections are held, speech ostensibly remains free—whilst the quality of public deliberation that constitutes the core of substantive democracy has been gravely compromised.

Levitsky and Ziblatt (2018), in How Democracies Die identify attacks upon independent media and the manipulation of public information as two of the four principal indicators of democratic backsliding. In the Indonesian context, both indicators are present in the buzzer phenomenon: buzzers erode the credibility of independent journalism by disseminating unfounded allegations of bias, and they actively manipulate public information through organised disinformation campaigns.

VI. CONCLUSION: SAFEGUARDING DEMOCRACY IN THE INFORMATION AGE

The foregoing analysis demonstrates that political buzzers are not merely an irritant in the communicative landscape—they are a systemic threat to the very foundations of democracy. From a global perspective, buzzers corrupt the public information ecology, intensify polarisation, endanger electoral integrity, and silence critical voices. In the specific context of Indonesia, the phenomenon has reached a degree of institutionalisation that is deeply troubling, with roots embedded in the broader structures of political-business oligarchy.

Addressing the buzzer threat effectively requires a multi-layered approach engaging a range of stakeholders. First, the regulation of digital platforms must be substantially strengthened, so that technology companies are held accountable for manipulation that occurs on their platforms, following the model currently being developed by the European Union through the Digital Services Act. Second, transparency in political advertising and influence operations must be mandated, enabling the public to identify when the narratives they consume are the product of manufactured campaigns.

Third, substantial investment in digital and media literacy education is required at every level of schooling. This responsibility cannot be delegated to markets or platforms alone—it is a duty of the state and of civil society. Fourth, the legal protection of journalists, activists, and critical voices from buzzer attacks must be consistently enforced, supported by a clear and impartially applied legal framework.

Finally, following the argument of Cohen (2019) in Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies: Communicative Capitalism & Left Politics, we must acknowledge that the problem of buzzers cannot be disentangled from deeper questions concerning the political economy of digital media, the distribution of power within society, and the collective commitment to democratic values. To resist buzzers is, in the end, to participate in a broader and more fundamental struggle to defend and deepen democracy itself.

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