Digital Anti-riba Campaign: Netnographic Study from Xbank Indonesia Digital Community

1. INTRODUCTION

Social media is a form of information and communication technology development that has many functions in today's era, including being a communication tool that strengthens family ties and a medium to get to know others.¹ Social media is now the most frequently accessed information tool by most of the general public, especially Indonesian citizens, to get the latest information or news through social networking applications, such as Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.² Social media has good potential as a business platform and trade competition, which many people utilize by seeing opportunities for technological progress, the large number of customer interests, and the low connection cost.³

Indonesia has a majority Muslim population, and most of its economic and business implementations have adopted the Shariah economic system (Islamic economic system). With the issuance of Law Number 3 of 2006 concerning the authority of the Religious Court in handling Shariah economic disputes, Law Number 19 of 2008 concerning Shari‘ah Securities, and Law Number 21 of 2008 concerning Shari‘ah banks, the basic foundation of Shari‘ah economics in Indonesia is getting stronger.⁴ The presence of fiqh muamalah (Islamic Law of business transactions) can be a guideline and reference for conducting muamalah or buying and selling by Islamic fiqh's provisions.⁵ Permissibility is the basis of fiqh muamalah.⁶ Everything in a transaction or sale and purchase agreement and debts is permitted unless there is an explicit prohibition in the Qur'ān or Sunnah, such as avoiding riba (usury), maysir (gambling), and gharar (fraud, uncertainty).⁷ 

The scholars agree that riba is an absolute prohibition, as stated in the Qur’ān and Sunnah. These texts permit buying and selling but prohibit riba because it is exploitative, eliminates justice, enriches one party, and harms the other.⁸ One form of riba we are familiar with is interest in a bank, which is usually an addition as a reward for loan services at a financial and banking institution.⁹ Large institutions and loan shark banks are not the only ones included in the riba category, even though they greatly help the community.¹⁰ The prohibition of riba is clear and firm, however, most people underestimate it and think the interest system in banking and riba differ.

Some individuals perceive no significant difference in the interest practices between conventional and Islamic banks, as they believe the profit mechanisms from credit financing transactions in both types of banks are similar. This misconception arises because many people do not fully comprehend the distinction between conventional interest systems and the profit-sharing mechanisms employed by Islamic banks. Some people have an opinion that the interest system in banks is permitted.¹¹

An anti-riba digital community on the Instagram platform called @xbank.indonesia uses advances in information technology in social media to spread awareness about the prohibition of riba and the virtue of seeking halal sources of income through posts they upload on their accounts. @xbank.indonesia is a digital community founded by former employees of the riba institution to remind fellow Muslims, especially colleagues of other riba institutions, to stay away from riba and not to mortgage their afterlife. Moreover, it also informs the public that riba is detrimental and that the wider community feels the impact of its practice. Hoarding of wealth so that trade investment is hampered, greed and disregard for others, loss of humanity, and justice are some of the impacts of the implementation of riba practices.¹² Changes in the wider community cannot be made quickly; the presence of a community also influences the shaping of an environment's character. A person's character is formed through interaction between individuals and communication by exchanging ideas, knowledge, experiences, opinions, and the like. A community gives us new friends and experiences as well as expands connections and networks.¹³

The current study aimed to analyze the digital campaigns carried out by the Instagram account @xbank.indonesia, a community whose primary focus is to preach about riba through social media. The study used netnography to see community interactions and cultural developments on social media. Furthermore, this study is considered necessary because there has not been much research discussing the role of anti-riba digital community in social media. The aim was to determine how dominant the account's posts are, whether the posts are following the theme they raise, whether the message in the post is conveyed correctly, and how social media netizens respond to the themes they raise. 

2. Literature Review

A study on the Islamic economic system and the prohibition of riba in a historical perspective state that riba is a classic problem in Islamic civilization. Despite its historical roots, riba continues to persist and evolve since the time of the Prophet Muhammad to the present day.¹⁴ The potential to carry out riba practices is quite open to financial transactions, be it banking or non-banking institutions, conventional or shariah. The practice of riba itself is a form of transaction that contradicts the principles of Shariah economics because healthy transactions, according to Shariah economics, do not contain riba, gharar, and maysir.¹⁵

Riba is an unjustified addition or increment in a transaction, typically without a corresponding reward or benefit. According to Muhammad Abduh, riba involves an additional amount demanded by the lender from the borrower due to a delay in payment, which is considered exploitative as it enriches the lender at the borrower's expense.¹⁶ This concept of riba encompasses various exploitative financial practices prohibited in Islamic law, as they undermine fairness and justice in economic transactions. Riba eliminates justice, gives rise to laziness and regression, eliminates commendable attitudes, as well as enriches the rich and impoverishes the poor.¹⁷ The practice of riba often occurs in lending and debt activities; when due, the amount is usually increased.¹⁸ In the practice of riba, there is also no such thing as a loss.¹⁹ The amount of interest in banking is determined by the amount borrowed and the duration of the loan period. Consequently, the longer the loan period or the larger the amount borrowed, the more interest is accrued, resulting in increased profits for the bank through its operations.²⁰

A study stated that riba is not only prohibited in Islam but also in other religions, such as Judaism and Christianity also prohibit the practice of riba.²¹ This prohibition of riba is mentioned in the Qur’ān, Hadīth of the Prophet Muhammad, and Jewish and Christian books. Some people still equate riba with buying and selling in general, which then revealed the word of Allah as a rebuttal to people who equate riba with buying and selling via QS. Al-Baqarah 2: 275 means “Allah has permitted buying and selling and has prohibited riba.”²² Allah's prohibition of riba is carried out in stages. The first phase mentions its destructive effects, the second phase signals that riba is haram, the third phase prohibits one of them, and the final phase prohibits it.²³ The Messenger of Allah further emphasized this prohibition by cursing the perpetrators of riba, including people who consume riba, their scribes, and their witnesses, as narrated by Muslim: no. 2995.²⁴

Riba remains a significant issue in contemporary economic practices, particularly financial and banking transactions. Many conventional banking practices involve interest-based lending, which is considered as a form of riba.²⁵ Islamic banks have developed alternatives, such as murabaha and musharaka to align with Shariah principles, but challenges persist in distinguishing between permissible and usurious practices.²⁶ Integrating Shari‘ah-compliant models into global financial systems continues to face obstacles due to inconsistent regulations and a lack of understanding.²⁷ The current study addressed these challenges by examining how digital communities can educate about the prohibition of riba, thereby filling a research gap in the role of social media to promote Islamic financial education.

3. Methodology

This study used netnography or online ethnography. Netnography focuses on the interaction between two or more people who can form a new culture or social system in cyberspace. On paper, netnography is the same as a virtual ethnography of other denominations.²⁸ Robert Kozinets developed the netnography method to analyze online fans of the Star Trek brand. The technique has been widely used until now.²⁹

Qualitative online research, such as netnography, plays a vital role in making it easier for us to understand the Internet, the influence of culture on the Internet, and the impact of the Internet on culture. Since netnography is a fragment of ethnography focusing on culture and online communities online, unlike the ethnographic approach, which requires researchers to participate in becoming a part of the online community, the netnographic approach is closer to the traditional form of netnography. The advantages of research using netnography are that it is easy, cheap, and encourages creativity. Therefore, netnography is less intrusive than ethnography and more natural than survey research.³⁰

The current study used social media, specifically the Instagram platform. Instagram is among the most popular social media platforms because its innovative features encourage creativity.³¹ The primary source of data was collected from captions, which were combined with content in the form of photos or videos. This data collection spanned six months, from April 2023 to September 2023, and included a total of 128 pieces of content. After filtering, 68 contents were selected that matched the theme of the total content, which consisted of 3,350 items. With such a large amount of content and a following of 600,000 users, @xbank.indonesia became the most extensive digital community on Instagram focused on the theme of anti-riba.

The current study employed WordArt.com to create word clouds in order to visualize the frequency of words in the text data collected from @xbank.indonesia's posts. The platform allowed researchers to customize the appearance of the word cloud by adjusting position, size, color, and shape, enhancing its visual appeal.³² Using WordArt.com, the most frequently occurring keywords in the dataset were identified. This helped understand the dominant themes and messages conveyed by @xbank.indonesia in their anti-riba campaigns. This approach facilitated the analysis of word patterns emerging from the data, providing insights into the community's focus areas.³³

Content analysis was conducted manually to collect and categorize the data from posts. This analysis involved sorting through the extensive dataset to identify relevant information aligned with the study's objectives. Manual data collection allowed for a detailed examination of the content; however, it was time-consuming as compared to automated online platforms.³⁴ The manual approach ensured that only pertinent data was included in the analysis, enabling researchers to group the data into meaningful categories that reflected the campaign's themes and messages.

Hypeauditor.com was utilized to measure the engagement rate of @xbank.indonesia's social media account. This platform provided insights into user engagement metrics including average likes, total comments per post, and the overall engagement rates.³⁵ By leveraging Hypeauditor.com, the level of audience interaction was assessed with the digital campaign, which is crucial to understand its effectiveness in order to educate the digital community about riba-related issues. This data contributed significantly to the analysis of the campaign's influence and role in order to promote Islamic financial education.³⁶

4. Results and Discussion

Word cloud analysis is a visualization method that analyzes and displays the frequency of words in text or data that has been collected. The current study used word clouds to analyze text data related to the digital campaign by @xbank.indonesia in the anti-riba campaign. Text data was collected manually from 128 posts on @xbank.indonesia's Instagram account over six months (April to September 2023), primarily from captions and multimedia content. These were filtered to 68 relevant posts using Microsoft Excel and then analyzed using WordArt.com for word cloud visualization. This tool visualizes the words that mostly appear in the text to make it easier for researchers to identify keywords that often occur. This tool is quite helpful to understand the message and purpose of the digital campaign by @xbank.indonesia.

Figure 1. Word Cloud Sample Data Visualization

Based on the analysis results from the use of WordArt.com, researchers can quickly identify the most frequently mentioned keywords, to then be analyzed in order to determine the dominant topics raised by @xbank.indonesia in its posts, which originally numbered 128 to a total of 68 posts, both photos and videos, namely:

The word "Riba" shows that the main topic campaigned by @xbank.indonesia was about riba. This data indicates that @xbank.indonesia is trying to encourage the community to recognize the forms of riba that are commonly circulating, stay away from sources of income that contain riba, and provide motivation to continue looking for halal sources of income. This is because there are still many people around, especially Muslims who do not know the forms of riba that commonly occur. The conventional practice to designate family members as successors often led to unprepared and unqualified individuals assuming leadership roles, resulting in a decline in institutional vitality.

@xbank.indonesia raised the word "bank" because the majority of riba occurs through transactions containing interest in banks. The bank itself is the center of interest circulation, which aims to continue to profit from all transactions, primarily debts and receivables, without considering the borrower's condition. Islam indeed prohibits this riba of the bank because it is exploitative, benefits one party, and harms the other.

The appearance of the word "Allah" cannot be separated from the main aim of the @xbank.indonesia campaign, which is to get closer to Allah by hoping for halal sustenance and blessings and always to be kept away from the path of riba. Allah also threatens the perpetrators of riba, the authors of riba contracts, and those who are bound by them eternally in Hell in the future.

The words “property and money,” are one unit. Property in the form of money is one of the elements of riba, as the Prophet Muhammad once mentioned in one of his hadīths. Property in the form of money is also one of the tools that most people use to be an intermediary for riba through loans, debts, and the like.

With the word cloud analysis, we can see the words that often appear to represent the main issues emphasized by @xbank.indonesia. This analysis gives an idea of their campaign's main goal and focus and how they contribute to spread the da'wah about the prohibition of riba and the pain of punishment for those who do it.

The two tables below present the number of content in the form of photos totaling 106 or videos totaling 24 and a thematic table containing the post's theme, number of posts, number of likes, and number of comments. The table displays four main themes in the @xbank.indonesia campaign, namely the “prohibition of riba,” “avoiding riba for the sake of Allah” “wealth and money about riba,” and “interest in banks.” Of the 68 posts, the theme “avoiding riba for the sake of Allah,” had 30 posts with 118,720 likes and 5,710 comments. Followed by the theme “prohibition of riba” had 17 posts with 72,449 likes and 3,350 comments. The theme, “wealth and money about riba” received 59,683 likes and 3,015 comments on 12 posts. Meanwhile, posts with the theme “interest on banks” had nine posts with 39,232 likes and 2,715 comments. The current study collected an average of posts with related themes, getting 4,265 likes and 217 comments.

Table 1. Post Format

Table 2. Like and Comment Quantity

The engagement rate results obtained using hypeauditor.com showed that the anti-riba digital community account @xbank.indonesia had an engagement rate of 0.66% with an average of 3,900 likes and 145 comments on each post. These results were based on calculations from tools provided by hypeauditor.com with data in the form of 3,350 contents with more than 600,000 followers on Instagram. The analysis revealed that the main topics emphasized by @xbank.indonesia's digital campaign centered around four key themes: riba, Allah, wealth and money, and bank. These themes emerged from the word cloud analysis, highlighting the community's focus on educating about the prohibition of riba, the importance of seeking halal income, and the role of banks in riba practices.

Riba itself is often mentioned because it opposes the Islamic economic system.³⁷ The goal of Islamic economics is to help others and achieve the welfare of the people. This phenomenon is clearly at odds with riba, which prioritizes individual profit and risks the rights of other individuals.³⁸ This problem made @xbank.indonesia hold a digital campaign to raise this theme, restore the welfare of the people in transactions, and educate them about riba, which has side effects in the world and the hereafter. With the development of the times, the form of riba in the jahiliyyah era has now evolved. Some of its forms are bank credit, loan sharks, hidden loans, and online loans.³⁹ All forms of riba that exist until now only have negative impacts, creating social inequality, eliminating economic equality, and damaging economic justice.⁴⁰

Allah strictly forbids riba in Islam through the Qur’ān and As-Sunnah.⁴¹ Allah also threatens the perpetrators, as in Surah Al-Baqarah verse 275, that people who consume riba stand like people whom Satan possesses due to insanity.⁴² This warning is none other than because Allah regulates aspects of muamalah to be applied between fellow human beings by following Allah's rules to protect the interests of one another.⁴³ Riba is different from the characteristics of Islamic economics, which provide leniency by not exceeding limits, not being excessive, and behaving appropriately in worldly affairs.⁴⁴ Therefore, @xbank.indonesia hopes that the digital community they build would always try to avoid Riba by remembering Allah's threats about it.

The implementation of riba most often occurs in banking transactions that hurt assets and also sins that continue to be carried out by society.⁴⁵ The interest in banking also only burdens borrowers in need who basically should be helped and not burdened.⁴⁶ All scholars agree that the rule of riba is haram. However, many disagree, claiming that riba is a form of contemporary or modern muamalah.⁴⁷ Such remarks are the impetus for @xbank.indonesia to distance society from interest-bearing transactions, especially in banks, which are often the solution to desired goods, and to educate the public that the path to riba is full of deception.

Riba often uses assets, including money, as an intermediary. In Islam, assets, especially money, serve as a means of exchange, in contrast to the conventional concept that makes money an item that can generate profits through rent or buying and selling.⁴⁸ Investment flows are hampered through riba. The evidence occurred when the banking crisis raged in Indonesia in 1997-1998, with interest rates reaching 60%.⁴⁹ Through riba, currency instability also emerged throughout the world.⁵⁰ Seeing the enormous impact of riba through money, @xbank.indonesia inserted this theme into its digital campaign on Instagram by describing the form of transactions with cash that lead to riba in its digital campaign with the hope that, if it cannot cure it, at least reduce the practice of riba.

The content analysis aimed to obtain the desired data based on needs from the total initial data of 128 contents with varying themes. These were then filtered into four main topics, totaling 68 contents, 290,083 likes, and 14,790 comments. The top theme was avoiding riba because of the fear of Allah, with 30 contents, 118,720 likes, and 5710 comments. The engagement rate analysis was obtained using hypeauditor.com based on the total number of posts totaling 3,350, which showed a reasonably low engagement rate at 0.66%, with an average content getting approximately 3,900 likes and 145 comments. The engagement rate tends to be low, indicating a lack of user activity and response related to the content they post. The low engagement rate suggests that the @xbank.indonesia digital campaign may not effectively convey its message. This phenomenon could be due to the complexity of the content, the audience not being easily understood, or the intended purpose not being communicated concisely. However, the response from the reader as a form of active interaction has not been seen. This condition affects the success of the campaign, especially the digital campaign, which is caused by the lack of interaction and participation from users.

5. Conclusion and Recommendations

In the current digital age, the role of social media has become increasingly significant to promote Islamic financial education. The current study examined the effectiveness of the @xbank.indonesia digital community's anti-riba campaign on Instagram, utilizing netnographic methods to assess audience engagement and content impact. The findings indicated that the @xbank.indonesia digital campaign received a positive response from users, as evidenced by the number of likes and comments collected over six months from April to September 2023. However, the engagement rate remained relatively low, suggesting limited interaction between the account and its audience. Based on these findings, it can be concluded that while the campaign successfully raises awareness about the prohibition of riba and promotes halal income sources, there is a need to enhance audience engagement and simplify content to improve campaign effectiveness. However, the low engagement rate indicated that the campaign may not be fully effective to convey its message, possibly due to the complexity of the content or the lack of clear communication of its purpose. Digital campaign of anti-riba need to increase audience interaction and present content that is easy to understand.

Additionally, theme mapping should be implemented to ensure that each piece of content aligns with the campaign's goals and is easily digestible by the audience. Secondly, this study found that the level of interaction between the account and the audience or vice versa showed a relatively small number. It underscored the potential of social media as a tool to disseminate knowledge about riba and its implications, emphasizing the need for more interactive and engaging content strategies in order to maximize the impact of such campaigns. Future studies could explore more innovative content strategies and engagement techniques to enhance the effectiveness of digital anti-riba campaigns.

Conflict of Interest

The manuscript author has absolutely no financial or non-financial conflict of interest regarding the subject matter or material discussed in this manuscript.

Data Availability Statement

The data associated with this study will be provided by the corresponding author upon request.

Funding Details

This research did not receive grant from any funding source or agency.