Its usage has evolved from merely socializing to business, politics, fundraising, keeping track of criminals, gathering masses and voicing public opinion, among others.

For example, during his campaign, Barack Obama raised about US$500 million dollars online, including from his 3.2 million supporters on Facebook.

Former premier Thaksin Shinawatra opened a Facebook account to update his supporters about his daily activities, as well as to criticize the Thai government.

Presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi relied heavily on Facebook to spread messages to young Iranians.

Collaborating with the Colombian Intelligence Agency, the FBI used Facebook to locate youth who threatened to kill the son of President Alvaro Uribe.

Israel’s internal security service, Shin Bet, acknowledged that Hizbollah used Facebook to recruit Israeli spies and agents.

Inspired by Facebook, the US intelligence community — consisting of the CIA, FBI, DEA, NSA, and others — created its own internal Facebook-like site — called A-Space — to share stories and files among themselves.   

Meanwhile, Indonesians have effectively created various groups on Facebook to influence government policy.

These include those that voiced support for the arrested deputy chairmen of the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), for the establishment of an inquiry committee in the parliament to probe the Bank Century scandal, and for a woman who is now facing a legal trial for criticizing health care provisions in an email.  

Realizing the major role that Facebook has played in our lives, especially in pressuring the government, in the case of Indonesia, questions still linger: To what extent does Facebook impact the working of our democratic government? And how should the government respond to people’s opinion on Facebook?

There are several pillars of democracy: executive, legislative, judiciary, media, pressure groups and the people.

An Indonesian writer recently added that as technology advances, the virtual world or the Internet should be the next pillar of democracy. Each of these pillars, then, should serve as checks and balances for the other.    

In the famous KPK vs. the National Police (Polri) case, we saw these pillars of Indonesia’s democracy at work. When people felt the House of Representatives sided with Polri, while the executive was behind the screen for sometime and the judiciary played no role (except the Constitutional Court) people turned to Facebook as the next pillar to voice their opinions. While this may show a healthy democracy at work, at first glance, we should not conclude so, perhaps not too soon.

We should know that Facebook does not represent the voice of all Indonesians. While the number of Facebook users in the country has reached 13.9 million, this amount is only 6 percent of our population, mostly concentrated in big cities, and not all from that figure participate in virtual political discussions.

Furthermore, since it only requires a few easy clicks to join a group to pressure the government, there is still the possibility that a user does not know the case they are supposedly fighting for in-depth. As evidence, although the number of supporters for the KPK’s chairmen exceeded one million, the number of protestors on the street was much fewer, perhaps in thousands.

Of course the government is not expected to ignore people’s opinion on Facebook, or even block the social networking site, such as China, Iran, and Vietnam have done.

Yet, the government should be careful that it does not base its policy decision solely on opinions posted on Facebook, however big a group claims to be.

Each of the democratic pillars should keep the others accountable. No one pillar, i.e. Facebook as part of the virtual world, should act as the determinant of policy for a democratic Indonesia. If this happens, our democracy may eventually turn into poor form of government; anarchy.
 

The writer is a PhD candidate in Public Administration at Virginia Tech and founder of the Youth Initiative for Indonesia’s Democracy and Development (YIDD).

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