<![CDATA[This study examines the Indonesian government’s crisis communication failures in responding to the #IndonesiaGelap movement in February 2025. It employs a qualitative case-study design and document analysis of official statements, online news reports, policy documents, and approximately 150 posts collected from X, Instagram, and TikTok between 1 and 28 February 2025. Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT) is used to assess the fit between perceived responsibility and response strategies, while dialogic communication, political personal branding, and algorithmic amplification provide complementary analytical lenses. The findings identify three chains of misalignment. First, a high attribution of government responsibility was met by denial, justification, and problem minimization rather than empathy and corrective action. Second, a crisis shaped by digital conversational dynamics was addressed through slow, formal, and one-way communication. Third, the affective “Gemoy” image was inconsistent with the government’s bureaucratic communication performance under criticism. These misalignments widened the space for counter-narratives, sarcasm, and digital polarization. The study does not claim a population-level decline in public trust; it identifies only indications of trust erosion within the analyzed corpus. The article argues for a single crisis-message coordination mechanism, empathy-based initial responses, evidence-based policy explanations, and documented digital dialogue.]]>
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