Fierce on Social Media Microsoft thinks that Indonesian netizens are rude in Southeast Asia

JAKARTA - The hospitality of Indonesian citizens is indeed something to be proud of, but it seems like a different story in cyberspace or social media. The reason is that according to the 2020 Digital Civility Index (DCI) survey made by Microsoft, the attitude of Indonesian netizens is actually ranked at the bottom of 32 countries in the world.

DCI is an annual survey from Microsoft aimed at "promoting safer, healthier and more respectful online interactions among all people". In this survey, Microsoft asked thousands of respondents from various ages and different countries according to behavior, sexual, reputation, and personal/annoying categories.

"This annual study of digital politeness is important to raise awareness and encourage positive interactions online", said Liz Thomas, Regional Digital Safety Lead, Asia-Pacific, Microsoft, quoted by Mashable.

Broadly speaking, Indonesia ranks 29th out of 32 countries surveyed by Microsoft. We are only ahead of Mexico (DCI 76), Russia (DCI 80), and South Africa (DCI 81) in terms of online politeness in the survey.

Singapore is the most polite Asian country in the survey, where they have a score of 59 and are in 4th place in the world after the Netherlands, Great Britain and the US.

Rating Score

The scoring system is based on a scale from zero to 100, with lower scores reflecting worse levels of online behavior and risk. Basically, every country starts the survey with a score of 100 points.

There are three risks that Microsoft described in its assessment, namely hoaxes and scams (increased by 13 points), hate speech (increased by 5 points), and discrimination (decreased by 2 points). From the DCI 2020 report, Microsoft found that the level of politeness of Indonesian netizens had actually worsened from the previous year which made it drop 8 points to a score of 76.

The reason is that Indonesia is considered impolite because of the high activity of Indonesian netizens who are exposed to negative things on the Internet. You could say that negative content is the daily food of Indonesian netizens in cyberspace, including social media.

These negative things are considered to erode the politeness of Indonesian netizens in cyberspace. The DCI report 69 percent of correspondents said that the most common action taken by Indonesian netizens when interacting in cyberspace is to defend themselves in giving comments when treating others on social media.

Interestingly, youth groups did not contribute positively or negatively to the politeness score of Indonesian netizens in 2020. The decline in the decency of our country's netizens, according to the survey, was entirely driven by adult netizens who were becoming more rude by 16 points.

"There is no change in the DCI score for young Indonesian netizens but a decrease of minus 16 points for adults in Indonesia", wrote Microsoft.

However, 42 percent of Indonesian respondents said online courtesy was better during the COVID-19 pandemic. Respondents said they felt politeness online was increased thanks to a greater sense of community and watching people help others.

Only 47 percent of respondents admitted to being involved in a bullying incident, with 19 percent of respondents saying they were the target of bullying. Indonesian millennial netizens have been the hardest hit by this online bully case.