Polarization of Religious Issues in Indonesia’s Social Media Society and Its Impact on Social Conflict

Abstract

Abstract In this new media era, people use social media to share information and discuss political, social, and religious issues that have pros and cons groups. In Twitter’s hashtags and tweets, religious issues frequently trigger a hot conversation that leads to netizen disputes and street movements in society. This study is intended to reveal the religious issues that often trigger polarization among Twitter users and how they influence horizontal conflict in society. This research applies mixed-method with social media analytics to conceal religious issues in Indonesia's social media society. The data collection was done by crawling data from the Indonesian Twitter users’ tweets regarding religious issues hashtags, which is a reference for further analysis. The research findings show that the top ten religious issues widely discussed based on 23,433 Twitter users’ tweets are the hashtags (#) salafi , wahabi , intoleransi (intolerance), komunisme (communism), taliban , anti-Pancasila , politisasi agama (politicization of religion), politik identitas (identity politics), radikalisme (radicalism), and pro khilafah . In many social conversation networks, the issues are related to each other and other issues of political figures, the three presidential candidates, the general election, and the Republic of Indonesia presidential election in 2024. And concerning these issues, Twitter users believe that the issues, good or bad, do not influence them. However, they believe that religious issues impact horizontal conflicts in society. Finally, it is hoped that further studies will elaborate on religious issues on other social media to capture the big picture of how netizens perceive religious issues.

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