Lecturer, STIE YPUP Makassar
Keywords: Viral Justice, Algorithmic Governance, Institutional Responsiveness, Procedural Sovereignty.
WIN Media, Opinion – Imagine if firefighters only arrived when the blaze had already gone viral on social media. State institutions, unfortunately, often behave exactly like that: more reactive to sensation than proactive in preventing problems.
Consider your own experience: how many cases were only taken seriously after becoming a trending topic? Meanwhile, complaints through official channels often drown in silence. This “wait until it’s viral” pattern, as criticized by Margetts (2021), transforms digital platforms into emergency courts.
In essence, this dependence on public pressure reveals the functional impotence of state institutions—their inability to execute their mandate independently and consistently without being propelled by the spotlight of algorithms.
The “Wait Until It’s Viral” Syndrome: The Reactive and Dependent Face of the State
This pattern has become an easily recognizable vicious cycle: an official report about a damaged road or illegal levy evaporates in an institution’s inbox, yet transforms into a priority project completed within days once videos about it flood the timeline. This post-viral flash response is essentially merely damage control, a theatrical effort to quell public anger that focuses more on image-building than comprehensive resolution, creating what Christensen et al. (2020) term performative accountability.
The root of this flawed cycle is systemic: weak internal reporting mechanisms and a rigid bureaucracy oriented more toward rules than results. In many cases, there are no real consequences for officials who ignore complaints through formal channels, thus no incentive to work before pressure mounts. Dwiyanto (2021) criticizes this deeply ingrained work culture, where initiative is often killed by hierarchy and fear of taking risks.
This condition is the clearest indication of functional impotence. State institutions are gradually losing their capacity to act on initiative and autonomously, becoming organs paralyzed without external stimulus. They no longer fully work to fulfill their constitutional mandate, but rather act like employees who are only agile when their “new boss”—that is, the raging digital public opinion—gives direct orders. This pathological dependence, as warned by Margetts (2021), shifts the logic of governance from being rule-based to trend-based.
Socio-Political Impact: The Erosion of Legal Sovereignty and Lopsided Democratization
The most bitter impact of this phenomenon is the splitting of justice into two castes. A sharp gap is created between citizens who are digitally literate, skilled at crafting viral narratives, and those who can only complain via letter or by visiting empty offices. Justice thus transforms from a basic right into a digital privilege, a luxury item accessible only with data quota and storytelling ability, as feared by Nielsen (2023) regarding the fragmentation of public space.
Furthermore, this practice systematically undermines the foundations of representative democracy. When official channels such as the House of Representatives (DPR), the Ombudsman Institution, or courts are deemed ineffective, while a single post on Twitter can overturn policies, public trust shifts from formal institutions to influencers and algorithms. According to Van de Walle (2021), this erosion of trust paralyzes the logic of representation, where the people feel represented by trending topics, not by their elected representatives.
Ultimately, society is educated to choose the path of confrontation. The public learns the hard way that formal protocols are an illusion, while public shaming and digital mass pressure are the true weapons. The long-term effect is the normalization of actions outside legal corridors, where symbolic violence and social trials (trial by social media) are considered more legitimate than silent legal processes. Margetts (2021) warns that when the state is absent, society will create its own mechanisms of “justice,” which are often reactionary and unfair, thereby undermining the legal sovereignty that should be a unifier.
Towards Institutions “Deaf” to Noise, but with “Sharp Hearing” for Aspirations
The solution lies in bold systemic reform, going beyond mere superficial digitalization. The state needs to build an integrated complaint system that gives each report a tracking number, a binding response deadline, and automatic escalation if ignored—a transparent mechanism that allows complaint status to be tracked by the public like a courier package, so that noise is no longer the only tracking tool. As emphasized by Bovens et al. (2020), accountability requires channels that are accessible and transparent for all, not just for the vocal.
This transformation must be driven by a change in work culture from the ground up. The bureaucracy must shift from a mentality of “waiting for orders and trends” to an ethos of proactive service. The key is changing the performance compass: Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) must be overhauled from merely counting outputs like the number of responses on social media, to measuring real outcomes such as the percentage of cases resolved and complainant satisfaction. Talbot (2022) asserts that outcome-based governance like this is what focuses energy on substantive results, not image-building.
Finally, internal and external oversight functions must be given teeth. Institutions like the Ombudsman and inspectorates general need to be strengthened with coercive authority and adequate resources to act firmly. They must become the state’s “immune system” that actively detects problems, not merely rubber stamps that only move after the bureaucratic body catches a viral fever. Only in this way, as articulated by Linders (2022), can the state become an autonomous entity where every citizen’s aspiration, whether whispered or shouted, receives an equal and certain path to justice.
Procedural Equality
A strong state is actually characterized by institutions that work reliably in silence, maintaining service consistency far from the clamor of trending topics. True strength lies in orderly routine, not in reactive theatrical actions.
Public pressure on social media is merely a fever symptom from a sick bureaucratic body. The antidote is not a momentary sedative for the upheaval, but a fundamental revitalization of the service ethos and internal accountability system, as emphasized by Dwiyanto (2021) regarding the importance of work culture reform.
Therefore, the impotence of state institutions can only be cured by building procedural sovereignty. An order in which every citizen’s voice, whether whispered through a complaint letter or shouted on a timeline, carries equal weight and has equal access to justice, so that the principle of equality before the law is no longer just an echo in the virtual world.