Digital ‘Taboo’ Storytelling

Digital storytelling as one of the innovations in the disruptive era that strengthens the culture transfer. The using of technology as a medium for sharing stories is one of the right choices. As a powerful distribution tool, it can reach various groups in all corners of the world. There are differences among western and eastern countries so, storytelling does not only share the richness of tales but also culture. Wattpad is one of the most widely accessed digital storytelling platforms in Indonesia. Moreover, as a technology that comes from western countries, Wattpad also contains western cultures in it, one of them is the LGBT movement. Usually, for some eastern countries, this culture is taboo, especially in Indonesia. However, on this platform appears the different interactions emerge about LGBT. Indonesian Wattpad users read and produce these taboo stories. There is also a virtual conversation among users about this content that can be accessed publicly through the comment’s column. This research attempts to describe the cyberculture of Indonesian users on Wattpad by using virtual ethnography methods. The findings of this study are descriptions of taboo cultural phenomena on Wattpad's platform through four levels of Cybermedia Analysis those are Media Space, Media Archive, Media Object, and Experiential Stories.