Indonesia
Indonesians have embraced social media to a significant extent across a range of content genres including news, lifestyle, entertainment, and religion. As a result, this populous market offers many opportunities for creators and journalists alike. News brands such as Kompas, Detik, and CNN Indonesia have invested heavily in social channels and these branded accounts attract considerable attention, but younger Indonesians are attracted to creators who look more like them, often mix politics with comedy, or who explain news in simple ways. Politicians have also recently embraced platforms such as TikTok and Instagram to improve their image with younger voters.
Najwa Shihab is a leading Indonesian journalist and founder of Narasi TV, a respected digital media brand known for independent, investigative news. The company aims to provide an alternative to mainstream media, which is often seen as being influenced by political or corporate interests. Najwa Shihab herself keeps an independent profile, not least as host of the political talk show Mata Najwa.
Deddy Corbuzier is a YouTuber (24m followers) and magician who hosts a popular podcast, Close the Door, which uses a similar format to Joe Rogan in the United States. He hosts wide-ranging discussions with politicians, religious leaders, and celebrities, but the podcast has been criticised for not sufficiently challenging controversial statements. Corbuzier’s role has come under further scrutiny after his recent appointment as a communications adviser to the Ministry of Defense – with the government looking to harness the popularity of key influencers. Other popular podcasts such as the one hosted by Helmy Yahya are also criticised for lacking sufficient journalistic scrutiny of public figures. Political influencers and podcasters in Indonesia often take a strong pro- or anti-government stance, including outspoken criticism of their opponents, contributing to a polarised environment.
The key channels for video-based news creators are YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok, the fastest-growing network across all demographics. During the 2024 election President Prabowo Subianto used AI-generated videos of himself as a gemoy, or cute and charming grandpa. These played well with younger viewers on Instagram and TikTok where he cultivated a strong following. Former president Joko Widodo has 59m followers on Instagram where he defends his record against corruption and makes arguments about the need for further welfare reform.
News-adjacent and lifestyle influencers are hugely popular in Indonesia. Ria Ricis is a YouTuber and entrepreneur, best known for her hijab tutorials. She has amassed tens of millions of followers on YouTube and Instagram. Ria is also the founder of the Ricis Style hijab line and is influential in the Muslim fashion community. Atta Halilintar (38m followers on Instagram and 24m on TikTok) produces lifestyle and entertainment content but is also influential in shaping wider youth discussions online. Willie Salim is an influencer who is known for his creative short videos, comedy skits, and high engagement on TikTok where he has over 70m followers. Salim’s online persona is built around his unsolicited acts of kindness where he often buys large quantities of food and distributes it to people in need.
Indonesia also has a number of anonymous or meme accounts, especially on Instagram. The best known is Lambe Turah (12m followers on Instagram), which breaks celebrity news and gossip and covers viral events.
Proportion that regularly pay attention to creators/influencers in social and video networks
44%
(3/24)
Proportion that regularly pay attention to news brands/journalists in social and video networks
25%
(15/24)
Gender balance
12
of the top 15 individuals are men
These lists represent the individuals most mentioned by respondents to our 2025 and 2024 Digital News Report surveys in the context of news and social media and video networks. Respondents who used Facebook, YouTube, X, Instagram, Snapchat or TikTok for news were asked where they paid most attention – including options for traditional news media/journalists, digital-first news outlets not associated with traditional media, creators/personalities who mostly focus on the news, creators/personalities who occasionally focus on the news. For each type, we asked respondents to name up to three examples of who they paid attention to. We then counted the individuals mostly using a tool called OpenRefine to help us use a semi-automated approach to clean the data (e.g. resolve misspellings or alternative names, remove duplicates etc.). In parallel, we also used ChatGPT5 to process and recode the original data, and to identify the most mentioned individuals to give us a way of comparing results. Further details on the tools we used and on small differences in methodology between 2024 and 2025 are provided in our methodology section (link).
Why did you use open fields rather than closed lists to collect the data?
We used open text response boxes, first, because in many countries the most popular news creators and influencers have not yet been identified by previous research. Second, because it would likely not be possible to fully capture the broad and fragmented nature of this ecosystem using a fixed listed of response options. And third, because we wanted to adopt an audience-centric approach whereby respondents could enter names that they considered news sources to them, even if they did not meet accepted standards or definitions within academia or the journalistic profession. This means that many of the names we list here would perhaps have been excluded under a more top-down approach.
How definitive is the order of the named individuals in each country?
In some cases, especially near the bottom the list, differences in the number of mentions for individuals are very small. Given our survey methodology, and the associated margin of error, the precise rank order should be read as indicative rather than definitive. Many other individuals were mentioned by respondents in the context of news, even if they do not make the top 15 using our approach. The lists should therefore be seen as indicative of some of the top news individuals in each country.
Why are some popular individuals with high follower counts lower down the list than individuals with high follower counts?
There are a number of possible reasons for this. First, some popular creators such as musicians and comedians are known more for entertainment than for news and their follower counts are often higher as a result. This means that even if they do occasionally talk about news related issues, not all of their followers will be aware of it. Second, some individuals working for traditional media may have relatively low personal followings but are widely distributed via social accounts of news brands. Third, there is a margin of error in surveys such as this (see previous answer) that needs to be borne in mind.
Did you exclude any individuals or other entries as part of the process?
Our lists are inclusive in terms of being faithful to the individual names mentioned by respondents. We removed just a handful of actors, sports stars, and celebrities if we were sure they did not post on any news-related issues. In most cases this did not affect the top 15 names that are published in this report for each country.
Many creators operate as part of collectives or use pseudonyms. How did you deal with these categorisation issues?
In terms of creator collectives or social-first brands, such as the Daily Wire (US) or TLDR News (UK) we followed the lead of our respondents. Where audiences have identified them as individuals, we have tended to categorise these as creators rather than news brands, but where they have mentioned a brand, we included them in our list of news brands. Where it was clear, however, that the brand is the work of one individual (e.g. Es.decirdiario/Sheila Hernández in Spain) we categorised them as an individual and made the connection clear in the description. Many creators use pseudonyms and, in these cases, we combined mentions of these with the real names. Again, we tried to make the connection clear in the description.
How did you deal with politicians and the overlap between politicians and political commentary?
Politicians and businesspeople are also frequently mentioned by survey respondents in the context of news sources on social media, and often have significant followings (e.g. on X, Donald Trump has 109m, Narendra Modi 109m, and Elon Musk 225m). Many politicians are also content creators and commentators who shape public debates. Some content creators have become politicians, and vice versa. We chose to include politicians if they were named by respondents in the context of news, but we have also shaded serving (or recently serving) politicians in grey to make clear the different relationship they often have with news consumers.