Social Media, Politics and Islam: Digital Indonesia in Electoral Years

This paper tries to understand politics and Islam in Indonesia during the electoral years (2014–2019). Within the five years, the relay of politics contestation has birthed phenomena such as identity politics and Islamic populism. The elaboration of political and Islamic issues will always be anchored in the configuration of social media, the Internet, and the 4.0 technology paradigm. This kind of reading is important especially in the current Indonesian context, where social media platform and the Internet is very inherent in everyday life. In fact, the processes that occur in the realm of politics or Islam rely heavily on the power held by social media. For example, the thickening and ‘freezing’ of identity in politics are more or less influenced by the internal mechanism of social media algorithms. In the explanation, there will be mentioned the earlier developments regarding the media, politics, and Islam. The averse investigation, or tracking the history, is still absolutely needed considering what happens right now is not happening abruptly. For example, regarding the contemporary Islamic populism, which tends to swing towards conservatism, cannot be separated from the Islamization process in the previous period which strongly affirmed the development of the media.