Latifah Dinar
13 Jun 2023 at 20:16


Bahasa Indonesia is a product of pluralism. Bahasa Indonesia is the official language of Indonesia that was established on October 28th, 1928, to unite all the youths from the different parts of Indonesia back in 1928, due to the ethnic and geographical differences. It means Bahasa aimed to accept the differences that Indonesia had without forgetting the differences themselves. This noble reason has been acknowledged by an Irish Political Scientist and Historian, Benedict Anderson, in one of his books entitled Language and Power: Exploring Political Cultures in Indonesia which says "Indonesian's main public function lies in its role as a unifier." Since its establishment, Bahasa Indonesia has shown the social process, culture, and politics of Indonesia. Besides having its character as an integrationist, Bahasa Indonesia is also known as the attitude of Indonesia which means the society mirrors the language. It reasons the differences of applying Bahasa Indonesia as the communication media due to the background that society has. The application of Bahasa Indonesia has also tremendously developed from time to time. This development has surprisingly made Bahasa Indonesia more interesting with the appearance of slang, absorption, and some words that are used only by the youngster.

Indonesia nowadays is surrounded by technology due to the launching of "Making Indonesia 4.0". People are massively looking for technology in order to help them to make their lives more efficient. This advancement has made a tremendous impact on every aspect of their lives that plays an important role in the function of society's life which consequently has changed their cultural behavior and mindset. One of the technologies that Indonesian is really fond of is the Smart Phone. According to Wikipedia, Smart Phone is a family of Mobile Phones that has hardware capability and an extensive mobile operating system. It also provides multimedia functionally, wider software and the internet. With 264 million population, Indonesia is placed on the fourth largest Smart Phone user having over 100 million users with 145 million connected to the Internet which eventually gives an advantage to the realization of Industrial Revolution 4.0. However, this fact has sadly lowered the stage of the application of Bahasa Indonesia as communication media. It is because of the two combinations of the internet and technology, called social media.

Social media is an internet platform that facilitates the creation or sharing of information, ideas, career interests, and other forms of expression via virtual communities and networks. Social media mostly could be accessed freely by any age, background, job, and gender in order to help people to find or keep in touch with their family or colleague that stay apart from them. With the ease that social media provides, it makes people massively fond of it and might become crazed by it. Some of them are 'possessed' by its facility which turns them into a Social Media addict.

In the modern era, the application of language becomes more complex compared to the past one. With a huge wave of technology and science, it demands people to follow the trend of using language that somehow, in this modern era, can become something that is supposedly not to be used, especially in social media, a platform that can be accessed globally. A lot of conflicts can happen in social media due to the misuse of language and it is worrying. A lack of knowledge in using a language on social media can be the reason behind conflicts. For Indonesian, a conflict between two well-known Indonesian persons, celebrities, usually starts a fight in cyberspace or social media where they write an individual opinion that will possibly offend the other person and evolves the brawl into reality. This thing usually happens and sadly has become a daily consumption for society.

To make peace, language is one of the most important elements that its presence is fated to be a solution for conflicts, especially for social media conflict. Language as a media of communication works to mediate conflict that happens around society. By talking and discussing the problem, addressing the source of discordance, and getting rid of all the assumptions by explaining the truth by using language as the mediator. Bahasa Indonesia was established from those worries of conflict possibility due to the diversity that Indonesia has. By learning Bahasa Indonesia and using it rightly, there will be a possibility to make Indonesia one of the peaceful countries. (Latifah Dinar, Kalimantan Timur)

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