Negotiating Religious Tolerance in the Digital Public Sphere: Social Media Responses to Pope Francis’s Visit to Indonesia

Abstract

This study examines how Indonesian social media users respond to Pope Francis’s visit to Indonesia and how religious tolerance is negotiated within the digital public sphere. This research is important because symbolic interreligious events increasingly become focal points of online debate, where issues of religious identity, minority recognition, and religion–state relations intersect in multi-faith societies. This study adopts a qualitative research design using content analysis and thematic discourse analysis. Data were collected from Instagram posts and comment sections related to Pope Francis’s visit, focusing on institutional religious accounts and mainstream media accounts. The dataset includes visual content, captions, and user-generated comments, which were analysed to identify dominant sentiments, argumentative patterns, and narrative framings. The findings reveal three main patterns. First, public responses are highly polarised, ranging from supportive interpretations that frame the visit as a symbol of peace and interfaith dialogue to resistant views that perceive it as exceeding theological boundaries. Second, the context and framing of the account significantly influence audience reactions: institutional religious accounts tend to trigger more critical and ideological responses, while media accounts generate more supportive and diplomatic narratives. Third, religious tolerance emerges as a contested discourse rather than a shared value, shaped by ideological positions, identity politics, and differing interpretations of religion–state relations. This study contributes to digital religion and religious communication studies by offering an event-centred, discourse-based analysis of online religious polarisation. Its originality lies in integrating religion–state relations and digital public sphere theory to explain how religious tolerance is negotiated in contemporary digital contexts.