Exposure without Belief: Mapping Awareness–Acceptance Gaps in Indonesian Political Controversies
Keywords:
Acceptance, agenda setting, misperceptions, motivated reasoning, public opinion, selective exposure, trustAbstract
Digital political controversies can spread widely without being equally believed, creating a gap between public exposure and public endorsement. This study examines whether awareness of political and governance issues in Indonesia translates into acceptance, and where the largest divergences occur. It analyses aggregated results from a national telephone survey of 1,286 respondents conducted on 17–20 May 2025. Awareness is defined as self-reported recognition of an issue, while acceptance refers to the paired survey evaluation: belief in an allegation, confidence in case resolution, satisfaction with institutional performance, or agreement with policy proposals. The study calculates awareness–acceptance gaps and compares patterns across political support, demographic, regional, and media-access groups. The findings show that awareness and acceptance often diverge. A prominent factual allegation produces the largest positive gap, indicating high awareness but limited belief, while several policy and performance items show acceptance exceeding awareness. Belief is also concentrated in specific political constituencies and information environments. The study argues that visibility is a poor proxy for persuasion and offers a transparent method for analysing published survey tabulations when individual-level data are unavailable.
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