Government Securitizing Effort of Online Harmful Content in Indonesia

Abstract

The emergence of the Internet and social media has altered the
way individuals interact with each other.This has also led to the flourishment
of many user generated contents in many platforms, where platforms act as
the medium or environment for users’ posts and interactions. While these
development may contribute to bring space for ensuring citizens’ freedom of
speech and expression, there also cases where the very same environment
is filled with ‘harmful’ contents such as fake news, hate speech, online fraud,
etc. The government along with other related stakeholders in the field have
the responsibility to ensure such harmful contents do not manifests into
offline harms. In handling these issues, the government have often utilize
legal measures to apply sanctions for the platforms and or individual creators
and restrict the spread of the contents. Using the securitization perspective,
this study will look into Indonesian government current approach in tackling
the online harmful content. This study argue that the government has put the
issue into a higher level, putting it into the national security agenda, in which
resulting in some extraordinary measure being applied in several instances.
Nonetheless, this study suggests that it is of importance for the government
and all related stakeholders to de-securitize the issue, putting it into the
everyday discussion and politics, while ensuring the protection of citizens’
rights.