The Ethics of Anti-Corruption Doxxing in Indonesia

The fourth speaker in this COMNEWS 2023 session is Isma Adila, whose focus is on the ethics of activism on social media. Digital activism on Twitter and other platforms has become a well-established practice, but this may also include problematic practices like doxxing and identity breaches; these are very questionable from an ethical perspective, of course.

This paper used a range of computational content analysis approaches to analyse Twitter discourses surrounding such practices, for instance when the @PartaiSocmed account doxxed a senior customs officer to highlight his allegedly corrupt activities; such cases often generate supportive reactions and reposts from netizens, in spite of their revelation of potentially sensitive personal information, and occasional cases of mistaken identity.

There are open questions about where such information comes from, of course; platforms have rules against doxxing, but these are not necessarily effectively enforced. When mistakes happen, this may increase pressures against these practices, and there is a need to further explore the ethical questions around these issues.