Certain new media platforms as framing strategy? a case study of the successful anarchist social protest in Central Indonesia

Abstract

This article deals with the elaboration of how offline activism was organized to move online through certain new media platforms in an anarchist public protest against the policy of gold mining concessions from 2010 to 2012 in Bima District, West Nusa Tenggara Province, Central Indonesia. Certain new media platforms are assumed to be used by the FRAT Bima’s activists as the electronic repertoires of contention for public outreach and framing strategies. In the offline realm, this social movement has been successful in launching claim-making, although it has to be pursued through the destruction of various public facilities, which has an impact on the cancellation of the local authority's policy to convert villagers' agricultural land into natural resource extraction areas. This subversive tactic was carried out in a planned way to give pressure on demands on the local government and at the same time, it was not planned as a reaction to the repressive treatment of the security forces. Mass violence was positioned as an outlet for deprivation-accumulative complaints and even an instrument of struggle. Meanwhile, in the online realm, the digital divide problem became a special obstacle that arose in the locus context where the use of new media platforms was limited so the formation of collective identity, mobilization of support, and network expansion depended on conventional propaganda channels which proved very effective to support the articulation of public complaints to the certain local authority as the object of the claim.