<![CDATA[This article presents an epistemological critique of the decline of electoral democracy in Indonesia through a comparative philosophical hermeneutic analysis that brings together pramāṇavāda with the latest empirical-political literature on cyber-troops and algorithmic manipulation in Indonesia’s digital public sphere. Unlike conventional media-sociological studies, which stop at superficial political-economic analysis, this article dissects three epistemic instruments that have been systematically undermined, namely śabda pramāṇa (authentic testimony), pratyakṣa (direct sensory perception), and viveka (critical discernment). The corruption of these three, it is argued here, produces bhrānti jñāna, that is, erroneous beliefs that structurally resemble error (rather than mere ignorance), which differ from ordinary errors in that they are institutionalised and continuously reinforced by algorithmic incentives. The contribution of this article is specific, not merely thematic, in that pramāṇavāda, through the āpta criterion in śabda pramāṇa, ties epistemic validity to the moral character of the witness. This constitutes a normative link not found in more formal contemporary analytic theories of testimony. Through this link, this framework is able to explain why sponsored disinformation is doubly corrupt: it is both propositionally false and morally illegitimate at the source level. As a practical implication, this article proposes a reconceptualisation of critical civic literacy based on viveka-khyāti, with the explicit caveat that the extension of this term from the soteriological context of Sāṃkhya-yoga to the realm of digital literacy is a deliberate analogical extension, not a literal interpretation.]]>
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