Yogyakarta, August 25th 2021─Center for Digital Society (CfDS) is back with DIFFUSION #58 with the title of “Opportunities and Challenges in Social Media Based Social Movements”.The discussion was held through Zoom meetings on Wednesday, August 25th 2021 and highlighted the massive use of social media in the digital era that brings with it an array of opportunities and challenges. To analyse the big theme, Rizka Herdiani and Maulana M. Haykal as the Intern Researchers in CfDS spoke about the theme through different perspectives. Rizka talked about “The Future of Mutual Aid in Indonesia’s Digital Age” which covered several issues during the pandemic. According to her, the response of local society in their individual or group capacity towards the problem of basic necessities is one of the factors of mutual aid or the culture of gotong royong. “The rise of public distrust is the background on the lack of mutual aid,” she said. Through this topic, Rizka highlighted the culture of mutual aid that is now quite viral in social media and other online platforms.
Additionally, Rizka explained that mutual aid is a part of our nature as a human as social beings that needs to collaborate and cooperate to fulfill our needs and survive. The fact that mutual aid disregards someone’s race, religion, gender, or social aid makes the phenomena interesting.
In response to the topic of mutual aid and social media, Haykal talked about the phenomena of social media activism crackdown in Southeast Asia’s democracies, such as the ones that are happening in Indonesia and Philippines. According to Haykal, both countries are similar as both have populist leaders that have the tendency to limit freedom of speech and expression. “In this era, social media is the platform to voice opinions in relation to social movements,” he said. However, there are still a lot of limitations and challenges coming from the government.
By the end of the session, Rizka said that mutual aid in the digital age makes everyone use things that are accessible. However, the existence of the phenomena was said by Rizka to give positive impacts to social movements. “Social movements that used to be financial aid oriented, now are spreading to other kinds of aid,” Rizka added.