Recently Indonesia has elected a new president and vice-president for the new term. There are, inevitably, many controversies regarding the elected candidate; particularly about our new vice-president (VP), Gibran R. Though there are a few I can discuss; I will talk about the one that sparks the most conversation (also somewhat the most relevant to digital media), his wildly controversial digital footprint. As defined by online dictionaries, digital footprint refers to the traceable digital activities, actions, contributions, and communications from someone’s digital devices or the internet1. Though I think we are well aware of digital footprint by now, my country’s election was the biggest case (also quite literally, at least for me, as it is also the 4th most populated country in the world) I had ever encountered on how crucial it is to be aware of what we post and how your words will come back to haunt you, especially when it is online.
Types of Digital Footprint
There is basically two types of digital footprint, passive and active2. Passive refers to the data collected from the trails you leave online, which is stored in many different ways; they also fuels the algorithm that is used by many social media or ads. Then there’s the active type, the content you post online or create on the internet, the ones you are deliberately making, kind of like the blogs we are doing now. These active digital footprints are usually traceable using archives sites, such as, Way Back Machine (though they were recently hacked) or other alternative like Archive.today.
The VP Case of Digital Footprints
Circling back to the topic I mentioned earlier, the scandal began when an old account owned by the vice-president (allegedly; due to political reasons, this is mostly just accusation) had posts offensive comments about other people, namely about the president and his family3. This, of course, became a huge deal in Indonesia. Said account was then investigated by many Indonesian in online forums trying to gain more information regarding the posts; attempts were made to use archive websites and other strategies to further dig the accounts and its link with the VP., some even found a porn account associated with the email account. Though he never admitted to this, his image was already tarnished. Aside from the fact that he got the position merely because of nepotism. This problem made people grew even more furious as his sibling also made insensitive remarks towards their already stained image4. Some speculated that because of this scandal, his relationship with the president grew strained; this peaked at the presidential inauguration, where some politicians were said to have ignored the VP’s presence. The whole scandal was very messy and truth be told, there is still more to it. With new information resurfacing the internet, who knows what other details will be brought up.
Final Remarks
Nowadays I do believe that people have some kind of understanding of what it means to be online and being aware of what you post on social media. Though this case made me realize of how your digital footprint and online presence may impact your future as well as your career. With companies doing background checking and other users getting better at internet sleuthing, who knows what lies beyond your old Twitter or Tumblr page.
- https://www.dictionary.com/browse/digital-footprint ↩︎
- https://www.ibm.com/topics/digital-footprint ↩︎
- https://www.channelnewsasia.com/asia/indonesia-fufufafa-social-media-gibran-rakabuming-raka-prabowo-subianto-4615471 ↩︎
- https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/19/world/asia/jokowi-sons-kaesang-jet.html?smid=url-share ↩︎
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