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This article examines the influence of the social sciences on policymaking during the first wave (2020 to 2021) of the COVID-19 pandemic in Indonesia. It explains two broad orientations of the social sciences: technocratic, which was incorporated into elite-driven institutionalized responses that, at times, did not fully address urgent healthcare needs; and critical, which provided timely digital health information for the wider public. On a practical level, though, the two orientations can be intertwined. The article argues that further understanding of social scientists' relationship to power is needed in efforts to make the social sciences more beneficial to the people rather than to the elite. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Per-capita, Indonesia has one of the world's largest user bases of social media. However, in terms of online participation, Indonesian women lag behind their male counterparts (Suwana [2017]. "Empowering Indonesian Women Through Building Digital Media Literacy." Kasetsart Journal of Social Sciences 38 (3): 212–217). This article contributes to a greater understanding of how digital media and engagement enables Indonesian women (as digital citizens) to creatively express themselves, contest gendered ideals, and coordinate political and social activism. It builds on literature that seeks to understand what this means for Indonesian women's active participation in and undertaking of digital citizenship. Drawing on interdisciplinary projects conducted by the authors, we discuss how female journalists negotiate digital activism in the Indonesian context. We demonstrate that Indonesian women's digital engagement and their active participation in the production of digital media enables them to creatively express and contest gendered ideals, as well as mobilise activism around political and social causes. In doing so, this article applies a gendered perspective to emerging concepts of digital citizenship, highlighting women's engagement, activism, autonomy, and creative expression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital activism has enormous ability to amplify offline and online civic activism and political participation. In Indonesia, digital activism has successfully supported social and political change in recent years. Motivation is an important component of digital activism that can stimulate movements, and can be determined by access to and use of digital media. This article presents a case study of motivations and digital activism in an online political movement in Indonesia through interviews and focus group discussions with fifty-two (n = 52) Indonesian young people (activists and students) who were familiar with digital media and the Save KPK 2015 movement in Indonesia. It investigates the digital activism of the Save KPK movement and the strategies employed to support the movement. The case study offers a deeper understanding of the Save KPK movement (which aimed to support an institution dedicated to eradicating corruption in Indonesia) and provides insights into the motivations of activists who digitally supported the political movement. Its findings explore how internal factors such as experience and beliefs fundamentally influenced young Indonesians to participate in the Save KPK movement using digital media, indicating that intrinsic is an important factor in delivering credible information and participating in the movement. Delivering truthful information about the KPK institution through digital media was seen as vital to combat the distribution of misinformation, such as fake news or hoaxes, and reinforce the political participation that helps to sustain Indonesian democracy as well as that of other democratic countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reconsiders contemporary digital activism in an increasingly pious Indonesia and responds to Eva F. Nisa's 2018 paper on young Muslim women as daʾwa (proselytization) activists published in this journal. This paper asks: How have today's socially mediated publics in Indonesia influenced the figure of the daʾwa activist? How are these daʾwa activists different from those in the past? I argue that the daʾwa activists are the products of a Muslimah intimate public, part of a networked public within which young women discuss, engage with, and express how they 'feel' about issues that interest them, and celebrate self-improvement and self-enterprise, combined with religious self-cultivation. Within this public daʾwa activists have two key characteristics. First, market logics and commercial interests are fundamental to their daʾwa. Second, the daʾwa accounts frame controversial and political issues through specific visual ethics that engender a sense of intimacy with their followers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]