Tweeting for Religion: How Indonesian Islamic Fundamentalist Organizations Use Twitter

Abstract

This study investigates how Islamic fundamentalists groups in Indonesia use Twitter to communicate with their stakeholders to achieve organizational goals. Based on previous work, three main functions of the use of social media by organizations were examined: spreading information, building and maintaining communities, and mobilizing for action. Based on an analysis of 2000 coded tweets from 20 Islamic fundamentalist accounts in Indonesia, the results showed that using Twitter for spreading information is by far the most frequently used function for Islamic fundamentalist groups in Indonesia, followed by community building and mobilizing for action. Our analysis of the effect of the different uses of Twitter shows that in terms of reach (i.e. retweets), there is an advantage in using Twitter to spread information compared to calling for action in terms of retweeting and–to a lesser extent–to building a community.