In 2004 Elections, according to the Carter Center, there is a report that in general, the media in Indonesia played a supportive and relatively neutral role in disseminating information about elections to the public. In this election, all parties and candidates in these elections had access to the media, unlike the previous ones. However, the state television was seen to promote the incumbent candidate while private TV and newspaper were used for promoting their owner or specific presidential candidacy.
However, in 2014 Elections, the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI) made criticism to a number of media outlets for biased coverage and did campaign advertisements that exceeded the limit set by the commission. Many of the traditional media outlets are owned by or affiliated with politicians and political parties. In May, the Indonesian Broadcasting Commission (KPI) warned give television stations for presenting biased coverage of the election.
About 90 percent of Indonesian people have an access to television, so having a biased information caused people to have insufficient information for an effective decision making.
Similar to other countries, Indonesia has a big number of internet users, especially young voters. Almost 22 million people or 12% of registered voters are between the ages of 17 and 21, or 29% of the electorates are below 30 years old. Google in Jakarta became a partner to Perludem, a local NGO, and to the Asia Foundation to run joint workshops for political parties on how to use social media to connect with younger votes.
Reference:
The Carter Center 2004 Indonesia Election Report, The Carter Center, June 2005, https://www.cartercenter.org/documents/2161.pdf.
AJI slams biased media outlets ahead of election, The Jakarta Post, June 5, 2014, http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2014/06/05/aji-slams-biased-media-outlets-ahead-election.html.
N.O., Chasing the first-voter advantage, The Economist, March 25, 2014, http://www.economist.com/blogs/banyan/2014/03/social-media-indonesias-elections.
Resources :
PDF : Media Guideline for Reporting on the Accessible Elections (AGENDA: 2015)
PDF : Sample press materials from election authority: general elections (1998)