Has Social Media Changed YOU?

Terry in his writing “A Citizen Journalism Primer” suggested that in countries that are not democratic, or recently become democratic and where there is a history of indirect or direct state control over official media sources, there is an indication that the Internet has a great significance as an alternative source of news and information.

After the period of New Order (1998), there has been a significant rise of Internet use in Indonesia. On the top of that, there has been an explosion of independent journalism. McNair in his book “Cultural Chaos: Journalism, News and Power in a Globalised World” pointed out that Indonesia is moving from the age of information scarcity to the age of information abundance.

Blog has become a tool for instantly publishing thoughts and opinions, sharing information, and conducting Internet businesses. Blog has also become an important source of news along side traditional mainstream media.

Besides blog, there has also been a remarkable expansion on the use of online social networking websites, Friendster was the first social networking website that has gained popularity among Indonesians. According to Hit Search on 10th April 2008, 20% of 20 million Internet Users in Indonesia visited Friendster and 40% of them had Friendster accounts.

After Friendster, the Indonesians are moving swiftly to Facebook. Facebook considers Indonesia as the fastest growing country in Southeast Asia with 645% growth rate in 2008, outpacing the growths in China, India, Malaysia, Thailand, and Singapore.

The question here is whether Indonesia is ready and steady with fast pacing of the new media development.

Learning from the recent shocking news, I learn that social media has grown into a powerful and serious tool with a tremendous potential to influence and change one’s destiny – both in positive and negative ways - in a modest country like Indonesia.