Analysing responses to digital activism in Indonesia and Malaysia using AIDA framework

Abstract

This article examines how six youth-led X accounts in Indonesia and Malaysia generated engagement and were associated with different forms of participation during the 2024 Indonesian presidential election and the 2022 Malaysian general election. Using the AIDA (Attention–Interest–Desire–Action) framework as a non-linear interpretive heuristic, it draws on platform metrics, interactional traces, and interviews with organisers. The study compares four candidate-centred volunteer accounts in Indonesia with two reform-oriented and civic education initiatives in Malaysia as an analytical contrast rather than a like-for-like national test. The findings show that spectacle and gamified formats scale Attention and affective Desire within platform attention economies, yet frequently remain associated with discursive, platform-proximate Action, revealing an action gap. In contrast, the Malaysian civic initiatives demonstrate stronger organisational and institutional linkages between online coordination, procedural participation and civic education. Situating AIDA within hybrid media ecologies and platform governance, the article argues that democratic effects depend less on visibility metrics than on organisational capacity and linkages to institutional processes. The study contributes to eParticipation research by distinguishing discursive-amplificatory, material-participatory, and institutional forms of Action and by specifying how platform logics condition their relationship to online engagement