- 24/12/2022
- Category: Commentaries
Author: Fransiskus Asisi Arya Seta Wicaksana
Editor: M Perdana Karim
Indonesian Ministry of Communication and Informatics (Menkominfo) enacted the 4 pillars of Digital Literation in early 2021 to support the ongoing Indonesian digital transformation [1]. The pillars consist of digital skills, digital culture, digital ethics, and digital safety. The purpose of these 4 pillars is to educate society on using technology and informatics technologies. Although the purpose of these pillars is important for the ongoing digital transformation of Indonesian society, there are cultural problems underlying this plan. Focusing on the meaning of digital culture, Menkominfo defined digital culture as for society to digitize actual Indonesian culture [2], and somehow abandoning the nature and meaning of Indonesian culture, which aren’t stagnant and are still in the process of development. However, digital culture is uncertain in nature which no authority besides society can define.
Digital Culture
Socio-cultural scientists had their perspective on defining digital culture. Digital is everything that has been reduced to the binary (0s-1s) [3]. It’s a technology that can take many forms into something that is numerical/binary, it can produce human abstractions into a new cultural form which is digital. Ethnographies that had been used as an approach to see how humans utilize digital technologies show three categories [4]. The first category is the cultural politics of media, which examines how real cultural identities are represented in digital media. The second category is the vernacular cultures of digital media. It’s a matter made from digital technologies such as digital groups. The third category is prosaic of digital media, which is an unimaginative aspect of digital media that society produced aspects naturally with digital technologies such as internet memes. The most important thing to understand is digitization is cultural in its applications [5]. The most commonly mistaken understanding of digital culture is seeing “culture” from a limited perspective and ignoring being in the digital world as apart from the global culture [6].
Culture plays a central role and is the most definitive aspect of the term “digital culture.” As defined by anthropology, culture is a whole idea system, action, and human creation earned from learning [7]. There are also three forms of culture: the idea system, social activities/practices, and artifacts. Naturally, culture isn’t determined. It is fluid and proliferates simultaneously with time [8]. From an anthropology perspective and for applying “digital culture,” the scopes of study must be oriented on social practices and idea systems created/practiced in the digital world.
Indonesian “Digital Culture”
Before getting in-depth on Indonesian “Digital Culture,” It is still debated an anthropologists to define “Indonesian Culture(s).” However, culture is not determined, and anthropologists are avoiding cultural determinism (a belief that human actions and behaviors are defined by the cultural environment regardless of the independence and influences from the outside of the environment) [9]. As stated by the famous author of “Imagined Communities” Benedict Anderson, Indonesia is a nation without single ethnic-cultural roots and now is still in the process of having a “culture” that is suitable for various ethnicities [10]. Even with Pancasila as the based value system of Indonesia, it isn’t sure to claim all of the nations widely “accept” acts based on Pancasila.
Then what is really “Indonesian Digital Culture”? Menkominfo stated digital culture is a method to attain digital transformation. The digital culture as mentioned by Menkominfo has to be oriented with the national cultural values, national insights, and Pancasila. Their goal is for society to understand that there is no difference between actual life and using digital technologies [11]. Even though the pursuit of digital transformation cannot be done without cultural adaptation, The definition that was given by Menkominfo opposes the “true” digital culture that has already been practiced by Indonesian in the digital world [12]. Pretty obvious see how a discourse of hate speech, false information, and provoking messages are circulating in today’s digital world [13]. But the sad truth it is the “real” Indonesian digital culture.
Manifesto of Digital Culture
Though the manifesto of digital culture formed by Menkominfo is indeed for a good purpose and the sake of internet safety, it is very complicated to pursue the goal if the actual culture is not equal stance with the manifesto of digital culture [14]. As the general understanding of the digital intersects with the definition of the virtual that the virtual cannot be separated from the actual [15], the first step to transforming “culture” into the digital is to strengthen the base, not creating guidance of “digital culture.” As long as the base (actual culture) is strong, the digital social practices and norms are likely no different from the “Indonesian Digital Culture.”
Besides strengthening the core of the digital culture, another essential part of a culture is how culture is made. Several anthropological theories, such as structuralism and symbolic anthropology, are explained differently to understand cultures. Structuralists believe that culture is made by a structure that constructs society, but symbolic anthropology believes that individual actors as the key to constructing society [16]. By mean that the digital culture proposed by Menkominfo focuses on the structure rather than the society to construct their digital self and meaning. As mentioned before, cultures are dynamic, and putting a “value system” as a core to build digital culture insofar is meaningless because digital culture is uncertain and still developing even in the global context.
Conclusion
The Indonesian digital society’s shared values, norms, and practices must be researched to attain the “digital culture.” There is no final form of a “digital culture.” But to put it in context, through interpretive (symbolic) anthropology, society is slowly but surely will understand the digital culture they’ve been practicing because there is also a regulation on the platform they use. As long as society takes part in the digital world, they are part of new cultural forms, and because the digital world is vast and global, a new culture may be born because the network of cultural differences is circulated on the internet.
[1]. Agustini, P. (2021) ‘Empat Pilar Lieterasi untuk Dukung Transformasi Digital’, Kominfo.Go.Id, p. 1.
[2]. ibid
[3]. Horst, H. A. and Miller, D. (2012) Digital Anthropology, Berg. Edited by H. A. Horst and D. Miller. London: Berg.
[4]. Coleman, E. G. (2010) ‘Ethnographic approaches to digital media’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 39, pp. 487–505. doi: 10.1146/annurev.anthro.012809.104945.
[5]. Lavender, A. (2010) ‘The Digital Culture’, in Bay-Cheng, S. et al. (eds) Mapping Intermediality in Performance. Amsterdam University Press, pp. 125–134.
[6]. Coleman, E. G. (2010) ‘Ethnographic approaches to digital media’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 39, pp. 487–505. doi: 10.1146/annurev.anthro.012809.104945.
[7]. Koentjaraningrat (2015) Pengantar Ilmu Antropologi, Rineka Cipta. Jakarta: Rineka Cipta
[8] Turner, T. (1993) ‘Anthropology and Multiculturalism: What is Anthropology That Multiculturalists Should Be Mindful of It?’, Cultural Anthropology, pp. 411–429. doi: 10.1525/can.1993.8.4.02a00010.
[9] (Oxford Reference) (no date) Cultural Determinism, Oxford Reference
[10] Anderson, B. (2006) Imagined Communities : Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. 2nd edn. London: Verso.
[11] Agustini, P. (2021) ‘Empat Pilar Lieterasi untuk Dukung Transformasi Digital’, Kominfo.Go.Id, p. 1.
[12] Hudson, S. et al. (no date) Symbolic and Interpretive Anthropologies, University of Alabama.
Ningrum, D. J., Suryadi, S. and Chandra Wardhana, D. E. (2019) ‘Kajian Ujaran Kebencian Di Media Sosial’, Jurnal Ilmiah KORPUS, 2(3), pp. 241–252. doi: 10.33369/jik.v2i3.6779.
Pearson, K. A. (2005) ‘The Reality of the Virtual: Bergson and Deleuze’, MLN, 120(Comparative Literature Issue), pp. 1112–1127. doi: 10.5840/philtoday200549supplement18.
Turner, T. (1993) ‘Anthropology and Multiculturalism: What is Anthropology That Multiculturalists Should Be Mindful of It?’, Cultural Anthropology, pp. 411–429. doi: 10.1525/can.1993.8.4.02a00010.
[13] ibid
[14] Agustini, P. (2021) ‘Empat Pilar Lieterasi untuk Dukung Transformasi Digital’, Kominfo.Go.Id, p. 1.
[15] Pearson, K. A. (2005) ‘The Reality of the Virtual: Bergson and Deleuze’, MLN, 120(Comparative Literature Issue), pp. 1112–1127. doi: 10.5840/philtoday200549supplement18.
[16] Hudson, S. et al. (no date) Symbolic and Interpretive Anthropologies, University of Alabama.
