Cyberbullying on Social Media in Indonesia and Its Legal Impact: Analysis of Language Use in Ethnicity, Religious, Racial, and Primordial Issues Agus Syahid Linguistic Study Program, Indonesia University of Education, Bandung, Indonesia; Faculty of Languages, Arts, and Humanities, Bumigora University, Mataram, Indonesia Dadang Sudana Linguistic Study Program, Indonesia University of Education, Bandung, Indonesia Andika Dutha Bachari Linguistic Study Program, Indonesia University of Education, Bandung, Indonesia Abstract—This study aims to reveal the phenomenon of cyberbullying in Indonesia targeted group of people and its legal impact based on pragmatics analysis. It mainly focused on issues that are related with ethnicity, religion, race, and intergroup on social media activities. The lingual data are the expressions by defendants on social media. They were collected from the copies of six court verdicts for such cases that have been settled between 2018 and 2020. The study employed a qualitative method with a forensic linguistic approach as a framework to reveal, trace, and show the phenomenon of cyberbullying on social media and the legal impact caused by the action. The results show that cyberbullying on social media in Indonesia not only targets individuals but it also targets certain group of people. Based on the pragmatics analysis, the illocutionary speech acts by defendants includes expressive, directive, assertive, and commissive. The utterances of cyberbullying aim to insult, humiliate, harass, slander, threaten/warn, accuse, and spread hatred on certain groups of community based on Ethnicity, Religious, Racial, and Primordial issues. The legal implication of cyberbullying is that the defendants can be charged based on the Law of the Republic of Indonesia, Article 28 paragraph (2) in conjunction with Article 45A paragraph (2) Law Number 19 of 2016 on Information and Electronic Transactions. Index Terms—cyberbullying with ethnicity, religious, racial, primordial issue, and legal impact I. INTRODUCTION The use of internet and social media in Indonesia has become more extensive in recent years. It enables everyone to interact, share, and participate with fellow internet users (Akram & Kumar, 2017; Solihatin, 2019). Social media has a positive impact, including the ease of accessing information, making friends, keeping contact with people, branding, and selling (Adiyanti et al., 2020). On the other hand, social media also has negative impacts, such as hate speech, spread of false news (hoax), and social media addiction leading to cyberbullying (Holt et al., 2018; Syahid et al., 2021). Cyberbullying has been defined as any form of aggressive communication using information and technology to mock others through social media (Ma’yuuf & Abbas, 2021; William & Guerra, 2007). The content of the message is basically psychological violence or social terror (Kowalski et al., 2014; Nasrullah, 2015). A bully targets an individual who is weaker and unable to perform self-defense or imbalance of power (Menin et al., 2021; Li, 2007). The aim is to humiliate, discriminate, harass, or intimidate the victim (Willard, 2003; Hinduja & Patchin, 2008). Such action is repeated (Smith et al., 2008; Belsey, 2005; Ybarra & Mitchell, 2004). Cyberbullying can be delivered using a computer or a cell phone through electronic mail, text messages, websites, chat rooms, and social media (Smith et al., 2008; Abaido, 2020). So far, cyberbullying studies only show that victims are only targeted at individuals. To fill the practical gap, this study aims to reveal the phenomenon of cyberbullying targeted group of people in Indonesia focused on issues that are related with ethnicity, religion, race, and intergroup on social media and its legal impact based on Indonesian legal perspective. There are three research questions used as a guide for this study. Below are the research questions: 1. What kind of illocutionary acts are found in cyberbullying related with ethnicity, religion, race, and intergroup on social media in Indonesia? 2. What is the aim of cyberbullying related with ethnicity, religion, race, and intergroup on social media? ISSN 1799-2591 Theory and Practice in Language Studies, Vol. 13, No. 8, pp. 1938-1946, August 2023 DOI: https://doi.org/10.17507/tpls.1308.09 © 2023 ACADEMY PUBLICATION