A review of digital communication research in Indonesia, 2020–2025

Abstract

This article presents a PRISMA-informed qualitative thematic review of digital communication research in Indonesia based on a bounded corpus of 51 articles published from 2020 to 2025 in five nationally accredited SINTA 2 communication journals. It asks what themes, methods, platforms, and Indonesia-specific conceptual possibilities structure this body of scholarship, and why this nationally indexed corpus matters for international digital communication research. The review shows that Indonesian scholarship is organized around five nationally situated thematic formations: vernacular platform use in everyday Indonesian digital life, platformed journalism and issue visibility in Indonesian news ecologies, institutional visibility and strategic communication in Indonesian platform publics, digital literacy and ethics as public pedagogical work, and misinformation and verification in fragile Indonesian epistemic environments. These themes are not simply Indonesian replications of Western digital media research agendas. They emerge from a specific communicative setting shaped by Indonesian-language scholarly debates, nationally accredited journal infrastructures, uneven digital literacy, high dependence on global platforms, recurring public concern over hoaxes, and the need for institutions, journalists, creators, and citizens to negotiate credibility in a rapidly platformized society. The article argues that Indonesian digital communication research enriches the wider field by showing how global platform logics are domesticated through local communicative norms, institutional legitimacy work, corrective public pedagogy, and hybrid verification authority.