Campaigns, clicks and complicity: How civil society actors built the ‘buzzer’ industry

By Pradipa P. Rasidi

It was March 2015 when Yani (not his real name), a senior figure in Indonesia’s pro-democracy movement, insisted that then-President Joko Widodo had become too important to be challenged. The meeting I attended, initially focused on local bureaucratic reformers, shifted to defending Jokowi, as Widodo is popularly known. Despite growing controversy, he was celebrated as a reformer from the provinces who rose to become president. At that time, less than a year into his presidency, Jokowi had nominated his party’s confidant as the national police chief even though that individual was suspected of bribery; this was seen as his first move against anti-corruption efforts. Yani, though uneasy, urged continued support of Jokowi and close oversight of his volunteer networks.

The volunteers Yani was referring to were a network of middle-class professionals who’d emerged as Jokowi’s base since his 2012 Jakarta gubernatorial bid. Rather than fostering civic engagement like in established democracies, they functioned as part of the electoral machinery. Drawn by Jokowi’s image of humility and distance from political-economic elites — “a new hope”, as Time dubbed him — they saw in him a figure capable of pushing back against the entrenched oligarchy. Jokowi’s volunteer-driven campaign was largely mobilised online and included endorsements from prominent civil society actors — activists, NGO workers and journalists — such as Goenawan Mohamad, the founder of the magazine Tempo, and Teten Masduki, a social activist who later became the Presidential Chief of Staff. These volunteers were widely credited with helping secure Jokowi’s 2014 victory.

The digital mobilisation they pioneered did more than elect a president. From analytics and algorithmic optimisation to sockpuppet account deployment, their methods seeded what would become Indonesia’s sprawling influence industry: an oligarch-financed, extra-state apparatus dedicated to shaping perception and silencing dissent. These tactics would later help propel Jokowi’s rival-turned-protegé, Prabowo Subianto, to the presidency in 2024. There was a time, however, when influence operations were seen as fair play among activists. Based on my experience working in Transparency International Indonesia from 2014 to 2017, as well as ethnographic interviews and fieldwork with influence operators carried out at various points between 2016 and 2023, this piece situates that moment through the rubrics of digital colonialism.

Digital colonialism and its local intermediaries

The notion of digital colonialism has emerged as a critique from scholars and digital rights activists, responding to the expansion of tech power from the Global North. Much like historical colonialism, in digital colonialism a handful of powerful actors extract data, labour and value from the Global South and marginalised identities. Whether framed in terms of infrastructure dependency, surveillance capitalism or algorithmic control, the critique remains: digital technologies reproduce colonial patterns of exploitation. 

But much of this critique flattens reality, erasing questions of class and cultural affinities by imagining the South as mere victim, never collaborator. In historical colonialism, empires were always mediated by native collaborators and allies. Far from the national myths of control and resistance, colonial empires often exploited and were exploited by local rivalries. In maritime Southeast Asia, colonial powers relied on indigenous elites — rulers, aristocrats, merchants and rival factions — to mediate their expansion. From the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, Moluccan rulers allied variously with the Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch, trading spices and slaves in exchange for leverage over local competitors. Rather than total domination, empires operate through tensions.

This interplay persists in digital colonialism. Platforms like Meta (Facebook and Instagram), Google and Twitter/X capture user behavior and social relations data and feed them into algorithms that optimise content generation and ad targeting. That data is also leased to advertisers and content promoters to improve targeting, monetising attention through detailed profiling. Surrounding this core infrastructure is an ecosystem of social media intelligence and advertising analytics firms. In the United States, firms like Acxiom convert such behavioural data into “premium proprietary behavioral insights” — clustering users by class, spending and geography — that they sell to government agencies, insurers and other clients.

In Indonesia, these processes are localised by the homegrown influence industry. Political consultants, digital strategists and marketers use platform infrastructures to serve domestic interests. They track online behaviour — trends, sentiment, engagement patterns — and sell these insights to politicians, companies or state agencies. Based on client needs, they then run “buzzing campaigns” using influencers, sockpuppet accounts, targeted ads and media partnerships to shape public opinion. These campaigns generate organic engagement from users and feed more data back into the platforms’ extractive engines. Just as native collaborators once contributed to imperial economic flows, the work of Indonesia’s influence industry helps to perpetuate the power of Big Tech platforms.

Civil society’s role in the engagement-industrial complex

Many civil society actors played key roles in the influence industry’s earliest days. Journalists, activists and NGO workers joined Jokowi’s 2014 campaign as volunteers, seeing him as a liberal-pluralist reformer, especially against his then-rival, Prabowo, a former general and son-in-law of Indonesia’s late dictator. Jokowi’s victory fed the optimism of a new age of “digital democracy”: a space where ideas could be contested and mobilisation decentralised. But as the mainstream media and his supporters lionised Jokowi, his image eclipsed democratic deliberation — like Yani said, he was perceived to be too important to challenge. What began as a “nexus of electoral and movement politics” morphed into (manipulative) public relations. 

For some, this shift was strategic. Jokowi, it was argued, needed support from below to counterbalance the oligarchs around him. Not only was his campaign driven by social media, his commitment to the idea of “digital transformation” — expanding internet access, digitising state services, funding e-commerce — won further support. For digital rights activists, infrastructure access had long been a concern. Rural areas were often framed as “underdeveloped”, and internet access was treated as an unquestioned good after neglect under previous administrations. Furthermore, many civil society organisations tended to rely on lobbying and championing political reformers rather than organising for change on the ground. Jokowi’s outsider status and pluralist commitment played into an “orang baik (good person)” narrative that was (mistakenly) equated with liberal politics, solidifying his appeal to civil society. 

This fusion of moral idealism and strategic realism drew activists, journalists and NGO workers into influence operations. Some ran sockpuppet accounts or crafted campaign content; others became strategists or influencers. Those at the forefront rebranded themselves as “citizen journalists” or “social media activists”. The journalist Pepih Nugraha, for example, built an online brand around narrative investigation, while others peddled insider secrets; such content amassed millions of views. As they cultivated audiences, many also deepened ties with political patrons. When Jokowi crushed the Islamist opposition in 2018 and weakened the anti-corruption commission in 2019, these actors helped shape the narrative, claiming that repressive measures were necessary to prevent Islamic extremism. As intermediaries in digital colonialism, they negotiated contracts for their knowledge of platforms, data amplification and political psychographics. They became cultural translators of algorithmic power.

By Jokowi’s second term in 2019, these loose networks had transformed into an industry. What began as volunteering for politicians and government agencies had extended to working for conglomerates, state-owned firms and even celebrities. Jokowi’s alliance with Prabowo in his second term blurred old rivalries and Covid-19 accelerated demand for digital campaigns. What was once framed as moral engagement had evolved into routinised labour. 

Many actors now operate on transactional terms, seeking the highest bidder while maintaining proximity to political-economic elites. This reflects a broader trend of government supporters receiving access, contracts or posts in government agencies or state-owned enterprises — a life path more economically secure than precarious labour in civil society.

What comes after 2024?

Today, the links between platform power and Indonesia’s political-economic elites are unmistakable. In digital colonialism, the colonised are not passive victims but strategic actors. President Prabowo, who inherited much of Jokowi’s digital machinery, hired Noudhy Valdryno, former Head of Public Policy for Meta in Indonesia and Brunei Darussalam, to be part of his 2024 electoral campaign team. After winning the election, Noudhy became Deputy Chief of the Presidential Communications Office, bringing with him operational knowledge and firsthand experience of how the platforms work. The influence industry continues to expand, drawing in a new generation of strategists and operators — some from lower-middle-class backgrounds — hungry for a career path.

Many in broader civil society, too, are entangled in platforms. There’s growing interest in aligning with social media logics — adopting “best practices” in digital activism, treating virality as metrics of success, and leveraging social media as part of institutional KPIs. With Prabowo’s strong hold over influencers, rights organisations also increasingly seek collaborations with other content creators to compete for algorithmic attention.

It’s a fragile relationship. Influencers may co-opt activism idioms to build legitimacy, then pivot to positions that better serve personal visibility — supporting freedom of expression one day, endorsing anti-labour policies the next. Reliance on platforms also leads to activists becoming enmeshed in the extractive infrastructures they oppose. Platforms reward emotional pull and algorithmic fine-tuning, pulling activist organising towards the logic of individualised attention. Under these rubrics, activism must be optimised — legible, marketable, ready for circulation, analytics and strategic repackaging. 

This is the crux of digital colonialism. It’s not just about domination from afar; it’s also about the tenuous capture of power: from the internalisation of platform logics to the ways in which the colonised seek to act, mediate and communicate.

Pradipa P. Rasidi is a digital anthropologist and software developer with eight years of experience in Indonesia’s civic space. He previously worked at EngageMedia, focusing on digital security, influence operations, and gamification. His research on sociotechnical imaginaries and relations has been published in HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, Communication, Culture & Critique, ISEAS Perspectives, and Tactical Tech.

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