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

Abstract

In this new era, people use social media to share information and discuss political, social, and religious issues, leading to pros and cons arguments. In Twitter’s hashtags and tweets, religious issues frequently trigger a hot conversation that causes disputes among citizens and even street movements. This study is intended to reveal the religious issues that often trigger polarization among Twitter users and how they influence horizontal conflict in society as what happened during the election period in 2019. This research applied mixed methods 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 eight religious issues widely discussed based on 23,433 Twitter users’ tweets are the hashtags (#) salafi, wahabi, intoleransi (intolerance), taliban, anti-Pancasila, politisasi agama (politicization of religion), politik identitas (identity politics), and radikalisme (radicalism). In social conversation networks, these issues are related to each other and other issues such as political figures, the three presidential candidates, the general election, and the Republic of Indonesia presidential election in 2024. Concerning these issues, Twitter users believe that the issues, positive or negative, do not influence their religious and political stance. However, to a certain extent, they believe that religious issues impact social discourses regarding horizontal conflicts. 44% opinions prove this indicated that the debate over religious matters had little influence on their opinion of these topics, and 64.5% agreed that religious concerns can cause social strife. Finally, it is hoped that further studies will elaborate on how religious issues on Twitter and other social media directly impact social harmony in everyday life.