Larry Diamond in Liberation Technology, Social Media and the Struggle for Democracy sees social media as a technology that plays a role in liberation in the Middle East, as well as the expansion of public space in China and Malaysia. Social media facilitates people to speak out, participate, and even mobilize themselves for change. In Myanmar, social media was used by activists and journalists to fight the repression of the authoritarian military regime. Social media connects people from all over the world, allowing the echo of a narrative to be heard more widely, and building a movement of solidarity.
However, Christian Fuchs, who chooses to discuss social media from a political economy perspective, writes that although social media opens up a wider public space, it is intended to accommodate as much information and data as possible for the purpose of commodification. Social media utilizes users’ big data to profit from advertising, which certainly threatens the security of users’ personal data.
This big data is what Mark Andrejevic (2013) calls a tool for surveillance of citizens, consumers, and workers. Vincent Mosco (2014) even calls big data collected by social media and purchased by the state a combination of “surveillance capitalism” and “surveillance state”.
The Cambridge Analytica case where Facebook sold user data to Trump in 2018 explains well the framework of the relationship between social media as an information and data business, with big data used as a basis for targeted advertising for election victories.
Social media and the challenges of Indonesia’s 2024 elections
On December 14, 2022, the KPU has announced 17 political parties participating in the national elections, and 6 local political parties in Aceh. However, despite the announcement, the campaign period will only begin on November 28, 2023. Parties are threatened with unscheduled crimes if they carry out activities that offer the vision, mission, program and / or self-image of election participants outside of November 28, 2023 to February 10, 2024.
Election activist Titi Anggraini believes that political parties will not wait for November 28, 2023 to approach voters. In fact, politicians who want to run as presidential and vice presidential candidates have utilized social media to increase electability. Social media will be an option to build popularity, reach voters, and change self-image.
“Enter here the potential space for actors who take opportunism. Buzzers will be there. That’s why it is necessary for social media platforms to take a role there. Because, platforms also get incentives from organizing elections,” said Titi at the discussion “Building the Resilience of Digital Democracy ahead of the 2024 Elections” (14/12).
The role that can be taken by social media platforms is to open data on all political advertisements in Indonesia since the determination of political parties participating in the 2024 Election, namely December 14, 2022. This data is important to be conveyed to the public, as a form of transparency of political advertisements that have an impact on the 2024 Election.
Of the Meta, Twitter, Youtube/Google, and Tiktok platforms, only Meta allows political advertisements on Facebook. Since 2020, Meta has provided a Facebook Ads Library to transparency ads circulating on the Meta platform.
Based on a study conducted by the European Partnership for Democracy consortium, the Facebook Ads Library often does not contain all political advertisements. The lack of a comprehensive ad repository causes this. The Facebook Ads Library also does not yet transmit who is paying for political ads, and to whom the ads are displayed.
Transparency of political ads on social media is more crucial, because unlike ads in other media that are shown to a wider public, ads on social media can be tailored to specific groups of people, potentially polarizing the voter base and distorting political debate.
The European Partnership for Democracy details standards for the Ads Library that a regulation could set to improve social media accountability. First, disclosure of the actual amount of advertising costs, not the range of advertising costs. Second, accurate and complete advertiser information, while maintaining the confidentiality of personal data. Information about third parties and candidates or political parties needs to be detailed in the Ads Library and disclaimer sections. Information about funding entities should also be disclosed and verified, including advertisers’ tax identification numbers.
Third, disclosure of targeting mechanisms and targeting criteria. Platforms should include the targeting goals chosen by advertisers.
Fourth, the number of social media users reached by an ad. Fifth, banned ads should still be published in the ad repository for public scrutiny. An explanation of why an ad was removed is also considered important.
In Indonesia, according to Titi, rules related to campaigns on social media are inadequate. The approach used is limited to limiting the ownership of social media accounts of election participants.
“The KPU still regulates in a very traditional realm, namely limiting account ownership in each social media to a maximum of 10 accounts,” said Titi.
The Philippines Experience
In the Philippines, there is a law that requires social media users to register their legal identity and phone number when they create a new account. This regulation aims to eliminate anonymity on social media that often spreads disinformation, hate speech, and is used as trolls. However, no study has examined the effectiveness of the regulation on healthy campaigning on social media in the May 9, 2022 Philippine elections.
The Undercover Asia program reports that trolls can be hired as mercenaries in the social media war in the Philippine elections. From an interview with one of the trolls, the tasks assigned were to promote certain politicians, share disinformation content at least 150 times a day, and join groups with more than 3,000 members. This operation was conducted more than a year before the election.
The wage for troll services is higher than the average monthly wage of Filipinos in 2020. Most trolls are people who work in the advertising industry, public relations, content production, and even former journalists.
Rappler reported that the president-elect, Bong Bong Marcos, spent more than 623 million pesos, the most of any candidate. The cost excludes spending on campaign ads on Facebook that Bong Bong Marcos did not report. Facebook Ads also does not detail the total money spent by candidates to produce political ads on the Facebook platform.
The non-disclosure of campaign costs on social media makes it difficult to trace illegal campaigns by candidates. Moreover, the rule of law regarding political funds is also not yet strong. 1 in 4 national election candidates do not submit campaign finance reports to Comelec, especially candidates who do not win seats.
The challenge for the 2024 Indonesian elections is not only how to engineer social media to become a healthy public space for democracy and not disrupt information for voters, but also to strengthen campaign finance reporting regulations in the digital space, and encourage transparency of political advertising by social media platforms. []
NURUL AMALIA SALABI
Researcher at the Association for Elections and Democracy (Perludem)
This article was published on electionhouse.org on December 22, 2022 with the title “Campaign Challenges in Social Media”, https://electionhouse.org/post/read/126/tantangan-kampanye-di-media-sosial