Social Media and the Successful Anti-Mining Campaign in Bangka, Indonesia

ABSTRACT

This article elaborates on the functionalities of Facebook and WhatsApp, and the possibilities and limitations of their usage in the anti-mining campaign in Bangka, Indonesia, with special focus on the participation and offline–online intertwining of communication processes. The research reported in this article contributes to a deeper understanding of the relationship between social media and political protest in the context of discriminatory natural resource extraction in Indonesia. In 2017, the alliance against the mining activities of the Chinese company PT Mikgro Metal Perdana in Bangka, which consisted of villagers, activists, tourism operators and divers, succeeded in ousting PT MMP from Bangka. Social media enhanced mobilisation, communication, knowledge transfer, transparency, and solidarity in this anti-mining campaign. Through WhatsApp, the rapid transmission of information and communication was facilitated when urgent action was needed. The Facebook group Save Bangka Island not only provided general information but also enhanced solidarity, cohesion and the creation of an “imagined community.” However, it is also found that social media sites are stratified spaces where villagers – the primary affected group – are excluded because of their lack of Internet access.

KEYWORDS:

• Social media
• Facebook
• WhatsApp
• Indonesia
• social movement
• mining

Acknowledgements

My deepest respect is expressed to the people in Bangka who risked their lives in resisting mining activities. I thank the families in Bangka, Manado and Jakarta who hosted me, and the villagers, resort owners and activists who welcomed and helped me. Furthermore, I want to thank the members of the academic network Contested Plural Ecologies: Anthropological Perspectives on Southeast Asia. My special thank goes to Birgit Bräuchler, Eku Wand, three anonymous reviewers for commenting on earlier versions of this article, and Sophia Bäurle.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The island stretches 4,778 hectares and is inhabited by 2,829 people who live in the four villages of Kahuku, Lihunu, Libas and Ehe. These people make their livelihood by fishing, agriculture, a few cash crops and wage labour. Almost all villagers are Protestants and the local language is a mixture of the languages Bahasa Manado, Bahasa Sangihe and Minahasa.

2. In addition, Bangka is part of the Sulu Sulawesi Marine Eco-Region Action Plan, and the Coral Triangle Initiative on Coral Reefs, Fisheries and Food Security (CTI-CFF). The CTI-CFF, established in 2009, is a multilateral agreement between the involved countries of the Coral Triangle to address poverty reduction through economic development, food security, sustainable livelihoods for coastal communities, and the protection of biodiversity. The regional office of the CTI-CFF is situated in Manado, the provincial capital of North Sulawesi. In 2009, the first meeting of the Coral Triangle Summit, the World Ocean Conference, and in 2014, the World Coral Conference was held also in Manado. However, the institutions engaged in maritime conservation who met in Manado did not strengthen the engagement of the anti-mining alliance to protect Bangka’s marine biodiversity. Moreover, the organisers of the World Coral Conference requested activists demolish their information booth about the mining plans on Bangka.

3. For example, articles in a 2013 Journal of Contemporary Asia special issue on “New Media in Asia” deals with the social and political impact of new information communications technologies and social media (Abbott 2013), the article by Leong Mei Lin, Pan, Ractham and Kaewkitipong (2011) on community empowerment through social media during flooding in Thailand in 2011 and Rodan (1998) on political control and the internet in Singapore.

4. While network theories are not the conceptual framework for this article, they relate to aspects of it by referring to connections between actors to analyse power relations. Analyses of networks are aimed at more accurately describing how people connect, relate and affiliate, as focusing on networks better describes people’s initiative and maintenance of relationships than bounded local groups (Wellman 1979). Therefore, networks can be physical or digital (Hogan and Wellman 2014).

5. We Are Social states that the average percentage of social media users in Southeast Asia in 2016 was 37%. Indonesia is situated in the lower third, with 31% of the population using social media. The highest was Brunei (69%), followed by Singapore (67%), Malaysia (59%), Thailand (58%), Philippines (47%) and Vietnam (40%). Below Indonesia are Timor-Leste (24%), Cambodia (22%), and Laos, as well as Myanmar (14%) (We are Social 2015c).

6. Commercial social media like Facebook and WhatsApp are owned by media companies which generate profit through advertising and by selling users’ data to private companies that use these profiles to target their advertising strategies (Fuchs 2010). Scholars criticise this accumulation of capital through the exploitation of users and low-paid employees (Fuchs 2008; Knoche 2005). However, amongst the members of the anti-mining alliance, those critics were not mentioned.

7. The relationship between PT MMP, state representatives and the military in this case underlines the continuing ubiquity of elite money politics, corruption and the failure of state institutions to enforce laws in post-Suharto Indonesia (Hadiz 2013). However, it also shows that the anti-mining alliance could successfully challenge patrimonial structures with the support of legal institutions at the national level. Therefore, in Indonesian’s new democratic order, patronage and state power can be newly negotiated in some contexts (Aspinall 2013).

8. WhatsApp Messenger, owned by Facebook since 2014, is an instant messaging service established in 2009. It is a cross-platform mobile messaging app for smartphones, using the standard mobile phone number and the internet for sending messages, and cost only $0.98 per year in 2016. In addition to sending text messages, users can send an unlimited number of images, video and audio files, and can create groups of users. WhatsApp had one billion active users per month worldwide in April 2016. In Asia, it is the second most popular social media platform, based on the frequency with which users log in. It is a common messaging service in Indonesia, used frequently for private and work-related co-ordination and communication; thus, many people in Indonesia install the app and use it frequently.

9. Although creating new identities online plays a role in discussions about the role of social media, scholars assert that slipping into a non-self-identity is rare (Gross 2004). Participation in communities like Facebook tends to require a certain degree of authenticity due to the constant monitoring by online and offline friends. Back and colleagues (2010) assert that social network sites serve as a medium for self-expression rather than for constructing an idealised virtual identity.

10. Generally, scholars affirm that Facebook users draw their contacts commonly from existing social networks and aim at strengthening them rather than establishing new networks (see Boyd and Ellison 2007; Ellison, Steinfield, and Lampe 2007).