Participatory Culture and Solidarity: A case of Sexual Violence against Minor

Abstract

News coverage about a junior high school girl who was raped and found dead was first appeared on April 5th, 2016 in several local sites in Bengkulu. Yuyun’s case started to gain traction after social media users had initiatives to use hashtag #NyalaUntukYuyun as an expression of sympathy. This online act followed by several offline actions and Yuyun’s case became the start of public awareness of sexual violence against minors’ issue. The goal of this article is to describe how participatory culture of social media users regarding the Yuyun case. Method used is virtual ethnography, with social media observed are Twitter. Result from this study are, netizens participated online via Twitter by using particular hashtags. At first netizens only have Low participation but rose to a high participation for their offline collaboration through "Ring the Warning Signs" and Solidarity Night. From these results, we recommend the modern social movement to use both online and offline media to attract public participation. Keywords: participatory culture, sexual violence, the Yuyun case