“Unity in diversity” is how Indonesia likes to describe its multicultural country. But cyber-bullying cases in Indonesia’s active social media project a different view of how Indonesia’s diverse groups really get along.
In Indonesia, going online to criticise someone or something outside of one own’s social group holds the risk of offending thousands of people. In the case of a Batak woman who called the Javanese city Yogyakarta “poor”, “stupid” and “uncultured”, it landed her in jail and got her suspended from her graduate studies.
Indonesia has been dubbed the “social media capital of the world”. Internet penetration is only 23% of the 240 million population. But nearly all of Indonesia’s internet users log on to social media.
Half of them use smartphones to do so. Jakarta tweets more than any other city in the world. Indonesia is also Facebook’s fourth-most-active country and Path’s third.
In multicultural Indonesia, the internet is becoming a new public space where conflicts between “us” and “them” manifest.
Watch your tweets
Florence Sihombing, a graduate student at Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta, faced the wrath of thousands of social media users after venting her anger at the city in her Twitter-linked Path account. The woman, who hails from North Sumatra city Medan, was upset when petrol station staff did not let her buy non-subsidised petrol for her motorcycle in the car queue. She wanted to avoid a long queue of motorcyclists who mostly buy cheaper subsidised fuel.
“Unity in diversity” is how Indonesia likes to describe its multicultural country. But cyber-bullying cases in Indonesia’s active social media project a different view of how Indonesia’s diverse groups really get along.
In Indonesia, going online to criticise someone or something outside of one own’s social group holds the risk of offending thousands of people. In the case of a Batak woman who called the Javanese city Yogyakarta “poor”, “stupid” and “uncultured”, it landed her in jail and got her suspended from her graduate studies.
Indonesia has been dubbed the “social media capital of the world”. Internet penetration is only 23% of the 240 million population. But nearly all of Indonesia’s internet users log on to social media.
Half of them use smartphones to do so. Jakarta tweets more than any other city in the world. Indonesia is also Facebook’s fourth-most-active country and Path’s third.
In multicultural Indonesia, the internet is becoming a new public space where conflicts between “us” and “them” manifest.
Watch your tweets
Florence Sihombing, a graduate student at Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta, faced the wrath of thousands of social media users after venting her anger at the city in her Twitter-linked Path account. The woman, who hails from North Sumatra city Medan, was upset when petrol station staff did not let her buy non-subsidised petrol for her motorcycle in the car queue. She wanted to avoid a long queue of motorcyclists who mostly buy cheaper subsidised fuel.
“Unity in diversity” is how Indonesia likes to describe its multicultural country. But cyber-bullying cases in Indonesia’s active social media project a different view of how Indonesia’s diverse groups really get along.
In Indonesia, going online to criticise someone or something outside of one own’s social group holds the risk of offending thousands of people. In the case of a Batak woman who called the Javanese city Yogyakarta “poor”, “stupid” and “uncultured”, it landed her in jail and got her suspended from her graduate studies.
Indonesia has been dubbed the “social media capital of the world”. Internet penetration is only 23% of the 240 million population. But nearly all of Indonesia’s internet users log on to social media.
Half of them use smartphones to do so. Jakarta tweets more than any other city in the world. Indonesia is also Facebook’s fourth-most-active country and Path’s third.
In multicultural Indonesia, the internet is becoming a new public space where conflicts between “us” and “them” manifest.
Watch your tweets
Florence Sihombing, a graduate student at Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta, faced the wrath of thousands of social media users after venting her anger at the city in her Twitter-linked Path account. The woman, who hails from North Sumatra city Medan, was upset when petrol station staff did not let her buy non-subsidised petrol for her motorcycle in the car queue. She wanted to avoid a long queue of motorcyclists who mostly buy cheaper subsidised fuel.
“Unity in diversity” is how Indonesia likes to describe its multicultural country. But cyber-bullying cases in Indonesia’s active social media project a different view of how Indonesia’s diverse groups really get along.
In Indonesia, going online to criticise someone or something outside of one own’s social group holds the risk of offending thousands of people. In the case of a Batak woman who called the Javanese city Yogyakarta “poor”, “stupid” and “uncultured”, it landed her in jail and got her suspended from her graduate studies.
Indonesia has been dubbed the “social media capital of the world”. Internet penetration is only 23% of the 240 million population. But nearly all of Indonesia’s internet users log on to social media.
Half of them use smartphones to do so. Jakarta tweets more than any other city in the world. Indonesia is also Facebook’s fourth-most-active country and Path’s third.
In multicultural Indonesia, the internet is becoming a new public space where conflicts between “us” and “them” manifest.
Watch your tweets
Florence Sihombing, a graduate student at Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta, faced the wrath of thousands of social media users after venting her anger at the city in her Twitter-linked Path account. The woman, who hails from North Sumatra city Medan, was upset when petrol station staff did not let her buy non-subsidised petrol for her motorcycle in the car queue. She wanted to avoid a long queue of motorcyclists who mostly buy cheaper subsidised fuel.