Indonesia: The Nation of Social Media Networking in the World

Since the end of 1990s, the use of Internet has grown fast in Indonesia as people have found it a new medium for social networking. In less than two decades, Indonesia has transformed into a social media capital of the world when it was named as the fifth most active nation on social media networking by France-based research company Semiocast in 2012.

The country’s capital, Jakarta, was ranked first as the most active Twitter city in the world, surpassing major cities like Tokyo, London, and New York City. The second biggest city in Indonesia, Bandung, was in the sixth place, beating Paris, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Semiocast showed the result of the survey on the total number of posted tweets in both Indonesian cities.

Even though Internet users in Indonesia seem to enjoy the cyber world,  freedom of expression online has come under threat when the Indonesian government introduced a cyber law, called the Electronic Information and Transactions Law, in 2008.

