The Asia Digital Life Project � An Outsized Role for Social Media in the Indonesian Election

The Asia Digital Life Project - An Outsized Role for Social Media in the Indonesian Election

Of 255 million citizens in Indonesia (which makes it the world’s third largest democracy) there are over 77 million citizens online — and 50 million of those are eligible to vote. There’s a very active social media landscape in Indonesia, and the social media activism community there is particularly vibrant.

Indonesia has one of the largest social media populations in the world. Globally, it’s number four in terms of Facebook users, and number five on Twitter. Jakarta is said to be the busiest Twitter city in the world. Indonesian’s are among the social media users with the most friends. For people there, having more than 1,000 friends on Facebook is not uncommon.

it’s true that social media was important in this election, mainly because of the lack of official information regarding the candidates and the election.

Both candidates also used social media a great deal, but in different ways.

This is the first time a vote in Indonesia has been subjected to this level of transparency. In part, that’s because the governmental election commission published the raw results online.