Creating Democratic Society: Howdo Malang’s Instagram Influencers Use Their Freedom of Expression and Speech?

Abstract

Creating democratic society is one of the main goals in democratic era. In the digital era, democratic society will be realized when the society member can freely use the freedom of expression and speech in social media. Social media is an independent media since it is not owned and controlled by political rulersunlike some of conventional media in Indonesia. As one of the most popular social media with 700 million of monthly active users in 2017, Instagram has a chance to be used as a media to controlthe democratization process in Indonesia. One of the basic principlesof democracy practice is freedom of expression and speech as provided for in article 28 of The 1945 Constitution of The Republic of Indonesia.It is the essential thing since every citizen is possible to deliver opinion about everything that matters.As part of Indonesian, Instagram influencers in Malang which are dominated by young generation play an important role in the democratization process itself. Toward their Instagram account, they can spread an influence to the society through their postby using their freedom of expression and speech. The research is done to discover how do Instagram influencers in Malang use their freedom of expression and speech as the representation of democracy in the democratic society. Based on the topics, qualitative research method was conducted, interview with informants that chosen purposively was gathered. Results showed that Instagram influencers in Malang use their freedom of expression and speech in two ways. First they use them to show their personal identity related to the job they have. Second, they use them to get a social utility in order to acquire information for conversation. Unfortunately,they did not use their freedom of expression and speech to criticize government policy since they do not interest in politics and afraid of being sued for it.

The Role of Instagram in Establishing Indoglish at A Vocational School

“…Social media uses webbased technology that converts communication into an interactive dialogue [8]. Social media is independent media since it is not owned and controlled by political rulers like some of the conventional media in Indonesia [9]. Social media also offers instant entertainment involving mass (netizen).…”