PRE-PRINT VERSION: Rasidi, Pradipa P. In press. “Of Play and Good Men: Moral Economy of Political Buzzing in Indonesia.” In Digital Technologies and Democracy in Southeast Asia, edited by Yatun Sastramidjaja, Sue-Ann Lee, and Yew-Foong Hui. Singapore: ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute. 1 Of Play and Good Men: The Moral Economy of Political Buzzing in Indonesia Pradipa P. Rasidi Introduction Fajar had been a busy man. When we first met in late 2016, the Jakarta gubernatorial election had just begun its official campaign period. Each candidate was permitted only four months for campaigning. Fajar was deeply engaged with the electoral process, yet he was unfazed with the limited period. He told me, chuckling, that time has never been his or his team’s biggest concern because he was a part of the “unregistered team”: cyber troops operating outside of officially registered campaign teams. The story of social media manipulation perhaps is a story of this decade. In 2015, the news broke that a Russian internet agency had allegedly intervened in the presidential election of the United States through the use of paid cyber troops. Three years later, in 2018, the Cambridge Analytica scandal exposed that data of social media users had been exploited for the benefits of Republican party campaigns. In Indonesia, meanwhile, the alleged manipulation of social media for electoral purpose can be traced much earlier to the 2012 Jakarta gubernatorial election. Much has been written on social media manipulation. Some scholars have focused on the role of cyber troops in social media by examining patterns of tactics, the actors’ economic motives, and media transformation (Han 2015; Paul & Matthews 2016; Saraswati 2018; Akmaliah 2018; Bradshaw & Howard 2019). Others have called for greater accountability of the social media platforms and greater transparency of their algorithms (O’Neil 2016; Tufekci 2018). Due to growing political pressure, especially in North America and West Europe, social media companies have taken heed of such calls, albeit gradually and sometimes hesitantly. Twitter has suspended more than 70 million accounts in 2018 in an attempt to deter social media manipulation and combat disinformation (Timber & Dwoskin 2018); alongside the other three tech giants— Microsoft, Google and Facebook—it also co-developed a nine-point industry plan to combat social media extremism (Facebook 2019). This focus on technological deterministic solution has done little, however, to put an end to organized online disinformation. The intensity of which has continued to increase worldwide from year to year (Bradshaw and Howard 2021). Less has been written regarding how actors of cyber troops themselves—called “buzzers” in Indonesia—perceive their digital labour and how they engage with the political climate in which they are involved. Contrary to the view that cyber troops are simply mercenaries, my findings show that—while economic reasons have always been a consideration for the persons involved—their involvement holds elements of a personal political project that is structured by contemporary Indonesian political culture. Or, in the actors’ words, their involvement is not always about the money but also based on idealism and “following their conscience”. This chapter argues that, in addition to being digital paid labour, buzzing work signifies a sort of urban middle class engagement with politics—a moral economy. Buzzing is a medium for certain members of the middle class to seek refuge from political polarization—ironically so, perhaps, given that the election campaign industry itself drives and thrives on polarization—while enabling them to stay politically involved in two ways at once: first, participating in the electoral movement