4 - Politics of New Tools in Post-truth Indonesia: Big Data, AI and Micro-targeting

Summary

The Indonesian presidential election held on 18 April 2019 was markedly different from the series of elections held in Indonesia since the democratization of 1998. One of its most prominent features was the incessant and widespread use of disinformation, both online and offline. A second notable feature was the feverish online election campaigns of both the Jokowi–Ma’ruf Amin and Prabowo–Sandiaga Uno camps. Online influencers and buzzers in both camps played significant roles in the election, each with distinct characteristics and patterns. The third feature of the 2019 election was the serious effort required on the part of both campaigns to discern the real facts and real voices of voters amid tremendous volumes of fake or dubious news and social media messages. Both sides used artificial intelligence (AI)3 to analyse big data amassed from online news and social media sites as well as offline data sets. The fourth feature was the start of political micro-targeting. The Jokowi team was far more engaged with this effort; groups of information technology (IT) specialists used data analysis through AI to micro-target voters and advised the Jokowi campaign on how best to tailor local campaign activities to local needs and characteristics.

This chapter describes these new election characteristics and campaign activities, based on interviews with actors from both camps. It argues that while political campaigners are strongly motivated to disseminate disinformation to influence voters, they also must discern the “real” voices and concerns of voters, and that they do so by using big data and AI. The Jokowi camp even started political micro-targeting using AI. In this sense, Indonesian politics has finally and seriously entered the post-truth era.

Arrival of the Post-truth Era in Indonesian Politics

Post-truth is defined in the Oxford Dictionary as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief”. The post-truth phenomenon has become quite visible since 2016, especially in the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States and the polls for the British exit from the European Union (or Brexit). In Indonesia, it started with the Jakarta gubernatorial election of 2017, and the 2019 presidential election was the typical election of the post-truth era.