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This article is part of the “Information abundance in Southeast Asia” project by Australian National University. Irma Garnesia is a research assistant working on the Indonesian part.
In Indonesia, female journalists and activists face relentless digital attacks. Many women report harassment from political “buzzers” (paid online propagandists) and “wibu” (obsessive anime fans), to K-pop fandoms and people with opposing political views. Journalists, editors, activists, lawyers, and digital rights advocates explain how this violence has unfolded over the last five years and why the violence remains a widespread problem.
Bunga (a pseudonym) never expected that her presentation at a Japanese cultural festival would make her a target. Her talk explored how Japanese comics often depict women in demeaning ways and how these portrayals reflect Japan’s patriarchal norms. But then, her presentation went viral on social media, and anime fans flooded her social media, accusing her of being a “hardcore feminist” who misunderstood Japanese culture.
Soon, her personal information spread online. Her identity as a women’s magazine journalist was doxed, her photos were circulated and edited on Discord groups. “The attacks didn’t just criticize my work,” she recalled. “They came after me as a person.”
The harassment left her traumatized and fearful of being recognized in public. “What if they stab me on public transportation?” she half-joked, though the anxiety behind her words was real.
Bunga’s experience is far from isolated. Kania, a freelance journalist and activist, frequently faces online harassment from political buzzers of former Indonesian President Joko Widodo. Pipit was attacked by people online after criticizing Indonesia’s national health insurance agency. Meanwhile, Nala, a fact-checker, was targeted by anti-vaccine groups within Indonesia.
These cases reveal a pattern of gendered digital violence where professional criticism was blurred by personal attacks rooted in misogyny.
The hidden scale of abuse
Much of this violence remains invisible. A 2021 survey by the think tank PR2Media, which involved 1,256 female journalists, found that 85.7 percent had experienced some form of violence, and 70.1 percent said it occurred both online and offline.
The Southeast Asia Freedom of Expression Network (SAFEnet) has documented the types of digital violence that predominantly target female journalists and activists. It can include doxing, gender or sexuality outing, online surveillance, photo manipulation, account hacking, DDoS attacks, where users intentionally overwhelm a server to bring down a site, and persistent online harassment.
These victims describe not only the attacks, but also how their colleagues or editors often blamed them for being “too reactive” or “too emotional” on social media. As they said, institutional protection was minimal.
“They simply told me to stay off social media for a while,” said Bunga. Yet her harassment had already spread across every platform she used.
Institutions on the defensive
However, it is not that institutions do not want to protect their workers. Even media organizations that champion gender equality are not immune.