Lessons from Indonesia's 2024 election: Social media, censorship, and youth vote

Young activists shared how the spread of disinformation and the use of AI influenced election results

Originally published on Global Voices

This article was written by Rezwan in collaboration with the Asian Network for Free Elections (ANFREL). It was originally published by EngageMedia, a non-profit media, technology, and culture organization, and an edited version is republished here as part of a content-sharing agreement with Global Voices.

On February 14, 2024, the Indonesian general elections took place, marked by a high voter turnout. The country has a history of using social media to suppress certain “narratives,” and the elections were marred by allegations of interference by the incumbent president, using the courts to bend candidate requirements, concerns for civil liberties, and cornering opponents and silencing critics.

In Indonesia, young voters were instrumental in electing Prabowo Subianto, a former general under former president Suharto’s authoritarian regime, who ran with Gibran Rakabuming Raka, the mayor of Surakarta and son of the incumbent president. They received the most support from Gen Z and millennials.

One notable aspect of this election was the use of generative AI in the campaigns. For example, the AI-generated cartoon avatar for Prabowo Subianto, created using the image-generating tool Midjourney, was popular among the new generation of voters. While the 72-year-old minister of defense has previously been accused of human rights violations against political activists in the East Timor — now Timor Leste — and the Papua region in the late 1990s, this new avatar no longer portrays him as a fiery nationalist. Instead, he is widely referred to by the Indonesian slang “gemoy,” meaning cute and cuddly.

Youth and the elections

Indonesia boasts over 204 million registered voters (75 percent of the total population), with over 56 percent being young voters who played a crucial role in deciding the election outcome. According to the 2020 national census, around 28 percent of the Indonesian population belongs to Generation Z, while millennials make up around 26 percent.

Indonesia has an internet penetration rate of over 77 percent, and most mobile phone subscribers spend most of their time online, according to 2023 statistics. Candidates increasingly courted young voters during their campaigns using platforms such as X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, and TikTok.

A new style of online campaign emerges

During the 2024 general elections, social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and WhatsApp became intense and complex political battlegrounds. These platforms did increase young voter participation and engagement. However, they also facilitated the spread of false information and hoaxes, potentially undermining the integrity of the elections.

Youth activist Afifah Fitriyani found the 2024 general election much more “fun” and “lively” due to the increased involvement of youth, especially first-time voters, using social media to engage with election and governance issues. She noted the use of advanced filters, videos, and sounds in social media campaigns made these posts trend and go viral. One candidate’s campaign heavily featured “fun” activities such as dancing (“Joget”) and cultivated a fresh image for the candidate (“Gemoy”).

Other candidates created hybrid discussion platforms hosted on YouTube to introduce their strategies and goals should they be elected. Political parties also used social media to further boost their images.

However, there were concerns as well. Afifah noticed that many people, including her friends, had chosen candidates based on the “branding” and “images” they built online rather than evaluating their actual track records. She also saw many undecided young people refraining from participating in these discourse events. “They often feel excluded,” she said. “Some of my friends expressed that those kinds of events are for ‘smart people only.’”

Dirty vote, censorship, and shadow banning

Afifah mentioned that the controversial documentary “Dirty Vote” — a documentary directed by journalist, filmmaker and activist Dandhy Laksono positing allegations of voter buying practices and systemic election fraud in the 2024 election  — was allegedly shadow-banned on YouTube. When it was released on February 13, one day before the election, the documentary could not be searched for. “To find it, we had to access it via a shareable link,” Afifah said.

This also extended to political posts on other platforms. “A lot of political posts on Instagram were shadow-banned as well. I see their views significantly decrease when compared to other posts,” Afifah said. Shadow-banning refers to engagement intervention practices in social media implemented by the platform to suppress the reach of certain content. In Indonesia, many activists alleged that the practice heavily targets content criticizing the government.

Reflecting on his experience in trying to organize a watch session of the controversial movie in his town in the Papuan region, youth activist Samuel Moifilit said:

After the release of “Dirty Vote,” direct internet access became very difficult. Opening YouTube took a very long time and we couldn’t search for or play the film on YouTube. We finally managed to watch it using a private drive that had the film.

When “Dirty Vote” was broadcasted, we [the student press and Papuan Voices] decided to organize a discussion. Suddenly, the authorities contacted several of our friends to inquire about the activities we had planned and even asked for the organizer’s contact information.

YouTube denied the shadow-ban allegation, citing that their system was working normally on the day of the movie release.

The planned public screening of “Dirty Vote” in Jakarta also hit a snag when the venue management canceled the event, citing a “violation of campaign recess rule” despite the rule not applying to events organized by civic movements. Undeterred, a few netizens organized interactive public screenings through their personal YouTube accounts, where viewers could simultaneously watch and comment during the screening.

A battle against hoaxes and lack of access to information

In Papua region, it was hard for locals to learn about the candidates or the campaign issues because of slow internet or lack of internet access.

“It is very difficult for information from Papua to reach users outside of the region, especially regarding events that occurred before and after the election. The news often remains confined within the Papua area,” said Samuel.

The government has had a history of blocking news sites that report Papuan issues, as well as running some military-affiliated news websites that specifically cover the region.

Aside from difficulty in accessing information, another challenge was distinguishing between credible news and disinformation. Afiffah noticed a lot of influence activities on social media: “On Twitter, I noticed that bots and buzzers frequently spam trending topics with irrelevant tweets, perhaps to bury news or critical information.”

On TikTok, the term “anak abah” (which means “father’s child” in Indonesian and refers to how presidential candidate Anies Baswedan supporters call him “abah” or father) is often used as an insult against those criticizing the current government and its policies. Many of those targeted are content creators, and the criticism they receive often contain repetitive arguments and insults, frequently laced with anti-intellectualism.

Academia was also targeted. Afifah said: “Lecturers involved in the creation of the “Dirty Vote” movie were heavily targeted with defamatory disinformation.” TikTok’s poor content moderation mechanism also contributed to the spread of anti-Rohingya sentiment. The Rohingya people, who are mostly Muslims, are a persecuted ethnic minority in Myanmar who fled to countries like Indonesia to seek asylum.

Contributing to the challenge of making informed voting decisions was the lack of transparency regarding candidates’ background and track records. Tharindu Damith Abeyrathna, senior program officer for campaign and advocacy of ANFREL noted that “in Indonesia, most asset declarations of candidates are not being published online,” even after they were elected back in February.

The good, the bad, the Artificial Intelligence

During the elections, generative AI content was used in the campaigns by many parties and there were a variety of attitudes towards its use. These campaigns used platforms like Midjourney or OpenAI and there are calls for platform accountability to prevent misuse of AI.

In January 2024, the Election Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu), along with 18 participating political parties, the campaign teams of presidential and vice-presidential candidates, and the Coalition of Peace, declared a Joint Commitment to the Code of Ethics for Election Campaigning on Social Media for the 2024 Indonesian Elections.

Among the younger generations, the use of AI, particularly generative AI, is seen in a negative light due to its direct implication to the livelihood of creative workers. There is also a perception that if the campaign uses AI, it “doesn’t have enough budget” to pay actual people, and is therefore “cheap.” According to IDNTimes research on Indonesian Gen Z trends and behaviors, Gen Z tends to be less impressed with new technological development due to their long exposure to the digital world, which allows them to be attuned to updates.

Samuel commented that it was hard for many to spot generative AI content: “The knowledge of AI is not evenly distributed; only friends who are interested in it understand the difference between ordinary content and Generative AI content.”

John Reiner Antiquerra, senior program officer for outreach and communication of ANFREL said that generative AI has the potential to be both beneficial and harmful. “Generative AI has the potential for misuse and abuse. We need to proceed with caution and there needs to be discussions on how it could be used (properly) in elections.”

Written by EngageMedia, Rezwan