Digital Democracy: A Study on the Legal Protection for Social Media Users in Indonesia

Abstract

The democracy in Indonesia develops with the shift of people’s behavior. People’s social lifestyles have shifted with the use of social media and the digitalization process. In the last few years, there have been many cases of hashtag actions in social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. This is a new legal phenomenon in the practice of democracy, called digital democracy. In its practice, some problems occur. Thus, there need to be solutions so that digital democracy can run effectively and efficiently. There needs to be characteristics and forms of legal protection. This qualitative research uses the normative approach and the literature study analysis. Results show that after being compared to legal stipulations, doctrines of experts, and democratic principles, the characteristics of the digital democracy above are already according to the democratic norms, doctrines, and principles. Even though it has not yet been explicitly regulated, the legal stipulations in Indonesia may still be used to regulate and protect these practices. But, as a form of democratic dynamics, there need to be further regulations to handle the problems of the hashtag actions in social media, so that it may run well.