TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Popular Reads
Top Results
No results found. Please check your search term and try again
Can't find what you're looking for?
View all search results
Popular Reads
Top Results
No results found. Please check your search term and try again
Can't find what you're looking for?
View all search resultsEverybody wants to be a political influencer
Platform-native influencers actively participate in the shaping of illiberal democracy, which in Indonesia almost always means working within the configurations of the oligarchy they appear to scrutinize.
Change text size
Gift Premium Articles
to Anyone
Share the best of The Jakarta Post with friends, family, or colleagues. As a subscriber, you can gift 3 to 5 articles each month that anyone can read—no subscription needed!
A female student holds a poster listing demands during a protest on Sept. 9, 2025, in front of the Senayan legislative complex in Central Jakarta. The action was carried out to advocate for the 17+8 people’s demands. (Antara/Fakhri Hermansyah)
A
cross the established liberal democracies, the ways in which public opinion is shaped and political influence organized are structurally shifting.
The 2024 United States presidential election was widely described as the first podcast election, while in the United Kingdom the same year was called the “TikTok election” on the back of Reform UK’s algorithm-driven rise and the growing centrality of platform-based campaigning.
Similar dynamics have shaped electoral competition across Europe and Latin America, where far-right populist actors have built mass reach through platform-based media ecosystems centered on short-form video, podcasts and influencer networks.
Trust in newspapers and broadcasters has fallen to levels unimaginable a generation ago, while political influence has migrated to a constellation of podcasters, content creators and platform-native politicians.
In Indonesia, where illiberal democracy remains organized around oligarchic interests, platformization reorganizes political influence into particular forms.
Here, podcasts and online commentary speak overwhelmingly from Jakarta for urban middle-class audiences, reflecting broader and deeper class inequalities. Political and economic commentators, journalists and public intellectuals build their reputations and influence through platforms like YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and X (formerly Twitter), where cultural capital accumulates through algorithmic visibility.
The expanding arena is not just a new space for debate but a terrain on which struggles over influence, resources and authority take place, within a social order where wealth and political authority are deeply intertwined with intra-elite power struggles.
