The world was fascinated by Iran's election last month, which dominated headlines for more than a week and had Americans reading Iranian Twitter feeds and trying to use online translators to decipher Facebook pages in Farsi. Nowhere, however, was there more apparent fascination with the tumult in Tehran than in Indonesia, the country with the highest level of proportional online interest in the election outside Iran, perhaps because Iran, like Indonesia, is a fledging Muslim democracy. After Farsi, Indonesian was the second-most popular language for Googling the two most prominent candidates, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Mir Hossein Mousavi.
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Now that Indonesians are about to have their own election on Wednesday, July 8, a look at Internet use in the country suggests interesting patterns of voter preoccupation. Indonesia might not be the most tech-savvy country, but it's a good example of how the Internet is upending everyone's traditional approach to democracy.
Like the Indian elections that preceded it, the Indonesian election -- the country's second democratic presidential election ever -- is remarkable in part because of its scale. Indonesia is the world's fourth-most-populated country, the world's largest Muslim country and certainly the largest Muslim democracy, and the third-largest democracy in the world, with 240 million inhabitants and 170 million registered voters.
The election is essentially a rematch between the two candidates who battled out the contentious 2004 election, incumbent President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (popularly known as SBY) and his predecessor, Megawati Sukarnoputri, who is generally called "Mega." SBY must also fight off his vice president, Jusuf Kalla, who is running on the Golkar Party's ticket.
Not surprisingly, primary interest in the Iranian election of early June emerged from Internet users in the Javanese cities of Jakarta, Yogyakarta, Bandung, and Surabaya, and in the Sumatran city of Medan. These are not only populous cities, but are also some the most connected. Internet penetration in Indonesia is limited to 13 million -- or 5.4 percent of the population. However, its use in young demographics is spreading, as Indonesian youth are increasingly drawn to social networking sites such as Facebook and Friendster.
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