Tari Rusbianti, Shafiq Pontoh and Sarah Reiter – You may be surprised to find that Indonesia recently became the number one user of Facebook throughout the Asia Pacific.

The country has quickly topped the social networking charts with a staggering 14 million users. This is not just important news for retailers trying to connect with their consumers but also an alert to big brands and governments that will feel the full force of community sentiment unleashed by the digital world.

This is significant as the Internet, usually perceived as the province of the virtual world, has begun to generate some very real results.

One of the most noticeable is its ability to provide a platform for sociopolitical movements, generating real-world action resulting in tremendous change.

It is also by now apparent that the Internet as a techno-political phenomenon is not limited to the developed world. Its power and influence is rapidly being experienced in many developing nations, including Indonesia.

Indeed, within Indonesia it seems that Twitter and Facebook are no longer simply social networking portals. They also give voice to those with no social standing, birth right, money or power to mobilize support for social change and champion injustices.

Social participation is, of course, not new in Indonesia. Anyone visiting or living here talks of peoples' wonderful sense of community. A common saying in Java is mangan ora mangan sing penting ngumpul – "with or without food as long as we are together."

The formal Islamic religious teaching of Silahturahmi teaches a Muslim to maintain close relationships with family, friends, colleagues, neighbors and others, and that to do so is an act of devotion.

The Internet, social networking and mobile devices have already unleashed social networking's potential here, giving "e-power" to the people.

In five months there were five nationwide social movements originating from social networking. Each illustrates the enormous political and social power of digital communication.

On July 17 last year terrorists bombed the Marriot and Ritz Carlton hotels in Jakarta. Indonesians everywhere were devastated and soon afterward, @ifahmi on Twitter created the #Indonesiaunite hash tag.

The #Indonesianunite tag become the number one Twitter trending topic, topping the Harry Potter movie launch, the Iranian election, Paula Abdul's resignation from American Idol and even Michael Jackson's death.

A very different example of e-power is contained in the creation of the movement BolBal. In July last year Manchester United was scheduled to visit Indonesia but cancelled because of the hotel bombings on July 17.

This not only disappointed millions of fans but also affected the livelihoods of many street vendors who had stocked up with branded merchandise.

The response was BolBal being started on Twitter. BolBal bought the football T-shirts from the vendors and printed the #Indonesiaunite logo on the back, adding new value to the unsold merchandise. Once the @BolBal account was established on Twitter, it took less than a week for all T-shirts to sell out.

Batik Day is the next recent example of this new e-power in Indonesia. When in early August news spread that Unesco had officially recognized batik as an Indonesian cultural treasure, it wasn't a government department, presidential decree or official declaration that suggested a National Batik Day, but someone on Twitter.

Public reaction to the high-profile anticorruption cases is another example of how digital social interaction is beginning to change national politics.

The arrest of Chandra Hamzah and Bibit Samad Riyanto, deputies in the Anti-Corruption Commission (KPK) on Oct. 29 provided another reminder of the growing social influence of digital interaction. Public disgust at the arrest of the two deputies brought about an instant response. Usman Yasmin, a Bengkulu professor, created a Facebook group called "Gerakan 1,000,000."

In just 10 days the group reached 1,002,000 members and became a litmus test of public disaffection. The result was quite tangible. It led to the eventual release of Bibit and Chandra and their reinstatement as the heads of the KPK.

Many citizens considered the victory of this movement as a clear demonstration of e-power and the influence of the digital realm.

Finally there is the unusual case of Prita Mulyasari and Omni International Hospital. When Prita complained in an e-mail early last year to a friend of her dissatisfaction with the hospital's service, its lawyers responded by suing Prita using the new Information and Electronic Transactions Act."

It became a criminal and a civil case, and in May last year she was jailed for defaming the hospital. Many saw this action as an abuse of power by the regulator, and slowly Internet chatter increased and public opinion swelled.

Bloggers around the country started to write about the case and openly supported Prita's right to freedom of speech. People started Facebook support and on Twitter the #freeprita hash tag was established supporting the cause.

Following support from more than 250,000 people on Facebook, the government regulator decided to free Prita from prison and put her under house arrest until Dec. 4, when she was found guilty and sentenced to pay $20,000 for defamation.

This created a further uproar, and the very next day bloggers, Twitters and Facebookers, hand in hand, generated a movement called "Koin Keadilan" (Coins for Justice).

The idea came from a blogger who asked his friends to collect coins to help Prita pay the relatively enormous penalty. Suddenly this became a huge movement. People from all over the country were collecting their coins for Prita.

Street musicians, beggars, taxi drivers, bus drivers, schools, teachers, executives, students, entrepreneurs, lawyers, and even politicians collected coins for Prita.

Top Indonesian musicians, Rolling Stone magazine and the Hard Rock Cafe also got on board. CNN covered the story in their breaking news and JNE Service Delivery offered their services to transport coins from all over Indonesia to Jakarta for free.

Public accountants helped audit the collection and the Bank of Indonesia and Mandiri Bank offered to help count the coins.

In less than two weeks, the Koin Keadilan movement collected more than $80,000, and OMNI International Hospital dropped the charges. Prita, freed of her obligation to pay the fine, donated the money to a trust. The sentence was reversed, she was found not guilty, and on Dec. 29 she was freed.

This movement led to double victory: Prita was freed and the government was forced to revise the new Information and Electronic Transactions Act.

These extraordinary cases demonstrate the power and influence of the digital medium as e-power has become a reality.

While the full social and political implications of this sudden explosion of social participation and voice is yet to be understood, its impact in virtually all areas of public concern is clear for all to see.

The lesson is not lost on the Indonesian and foreign governments. The US Embassy in Jakarta has, since its early days of cooperation with Pesta Blogger in 2007, plunged into social media with a zeal only Americans can muster.

Its Facebook page, for instance, has nearly 24,500 fans and its latest initiative is to use them to conduct the first direct streaming forum of its kind.

This sudden flowering of digital social networking has brought vigor and depth to the public debate in Indonesia rarely witnessed in formal political circles.

It has brought freshness to the democratic experiment that most developed countries can only dream about. We should all ensure that things stay that way.

[Tari Rusbianti, Shafiq Pontoh and Sarah Reiter are research contributors to Strategic Asia, a Jakarta-based consultancy promoting cooperation among Asian countries.]