Digital Democracy in Indonesia's 2019 Election: Between Citizen Participation and Political Polarization

摘要

In April 2019 Indonesia conducted its fourth direct election since the 1998 democratic reformation. This election is frequently described as one of the most complicated elections in the world, given a large number of voter and simultaneous process with the legislative election. The eminent feature of the current elections in Indonesia is the increasing use of the internet for the various forms of electoral politics. The internet has been widely used in the election campaign, voter education as well as disseminating information on electoral rules and election result. It leads to the question about the influence of the online platform to electoral political participation in Indonesia. This paper attempts to investigate the nexus between digital democracy through an online platform and political participation by analysing the role of Kawal Pemilu and AyoJagaTPS, the crowdsourcing projects run by civil society. This platform is an essential effort to prevent electoral irregularities that could undermine the legitimacy of the election. Taking the classical literature on political participation that classified political participation into four dimensions: voting, campaign activity, contacting official and collective activities, this paper argues that online political participation through digital democracy offers a new dimension of participation by accentuating voluntarily action from the public. However, it also creates competition and distrust around the subject of digital data resulted from deepening polarization in Indonesia's politics. This paper employs qualitative methods to analyse a case study of Kawal Pemilu and AyoJagaTPS, the citizen digital platforms as one of the forms of political participation during Indonesia 2019 election.