Nickel Industry Narrative in Social Media

DOZENS of employees wearing cream-colored uniforms dance barefoot to the song Chicken Dance. The video was uploaded to TikTok on Saturday, February 1, 2025, by user @mr_suu244. The account belongs to Sufri Hi Rajak, an employee of Indonesia Weda Bay Industrial Park (IWIP).

Sufri, who has nearly 45,000 followers, often posts clips of IWIP employees dancing in uniform. Sometimes he pairs the moves with Bollywood soundtracks. Some of his videos rack up tens of thousands of views on TikTok.

Just a day before Sufri shared the Chicken Dance video, tragedy struck at IWIP’s mining site. A landslide on Friday, January 31, killed two workers. There was no mention of the accident anywhere on Sufri’s page.

Reached through a social media chat service, Sufri said his dance content was meant to show a different side of the company. “I want people outside to see there are positive things at IWIP,” said the senior staffer in IWIP’s Human Resources Development Division on Tuesday, September 16.

Sufri is not the only one producing dance clips. The account @gchreal22 frequently posts himself dancing in IWIP uniform, sometimes slipping in messages about the company’s work environment.

The nickel processing complex at Indonesia Weda Bay Industrial Park (IWIP) in Central Weda, Central Halmahera, North Maluku, August 28, 2025. Tempo/Imam Sukamto

Melissa Van Dyke, a former director at Recruitics—a talent acquisition firm operating in the United States, the Netherlands, and the United Kingsom—has written about TikTok’s effectiveness in corporate branding. She notes that TikTok’s unique algorithm drives engagement, enabling content to go viral even with few followers. Users’ experience of a narrative, she says, can also be shaped by streams of similar content.

That is the playbook many companies now follow to polish their image, including mining corporations that face allegations of work safety issues and environmental damage. They project themselves as friendly workplaces through a flood of employee-generated content. One popular form is the so-called ‘branding dance.’ Yet these same companies face persistent problems of workplace safety and environmental damage.

Tempo, in collaboration with Code for Africa—a digital and data journalism laboratory—investigated the nickel industry’s image-laundering strategies. Nickel has become one of Indonesia’s flagship sectors, with export earnings reaching US$7.99 billion in 2024. IWIP stands at the center of this boom, promoted as a pioneer of ‘green’ nickel.

The company is suspected of using social media to airbrush its reputation. In May 2025, the Nexus3 Foundation—an environmental watchdog—released findings of arsenic and mercury contamination in fish caught by local fishermen near Weda Bay, Central Halmahera, North Maluku.

It was not just seafood. Dozens of blood samples from IWIP employees and local residents were also contaminated with the two heavy metals, exceeding safe limits. Nexus3 conducted the research with a team from Tadulako University in Palu, Central Sulawesi.

Children playing and swimming in the Sageyen River at Sagea village, North Weda District, Central Halmahera, North Maluku, August 26, 2025. Tempo/Imam Sukamto

The findings circulated widely in mainstream media. But on social media, the story barely registered. In the months following the release of the Nexus3-Tadulako study, positive content about IWIP was posted more than doubled, from 99 posts in June to 243 in the second week of September 2025.

These upbeat videos told a very different story than the research. They showcased the company celebrating World Environment Day, planting mangroves, and of course, employees dancing.

Kunto Adi Wibowo, Head of the Center for Communication, Media, and Cultural Studies at Padjadjaran University, said positive content is carefully designed to align with the reputation a company wants to project. In extractive industries, that usually means looking eco-friendly while promising safe, prosperous workplaces. “They rely on strong visual material to draw in followers and viewers,” Kunto said.

Negative content, by contrast, pushes narratives that clash with the corporate image. Such posts, Kunto explained, can erode public perception of the company.

To track IWIP’s online campaign, Tempo filtered posts through hashtags including #iwip, #iwiphits, #iwip_wedabay, #iwiphalteng, #iwiphelmkuning, and #wedabaynikel. On TikTok, 1,632 posts were analyzed. Output about IWIP on the China-based platform surged in three years, from 47 in 2022 to 881 in 2025. Ninety-six percent of the posts highlighted the benefits of working in nickel mines, such as high wages and equal opportunities for women. The rest touched on the impacts of mining, including work accidents and employment issues.

Residents carrying out daily activities along the banks of the Saloi River, its waters turned brown from nickel mining, in the Trans Kobe area, Central Weda, Central Halmahera, North Maluku, August 27, 2025. Tempo/Imam Sukamto

On YouTube, Tempo analyzed 1,345 videos. Ninety-five percent focused on job opportunities, infrastructure development, fair salaries, and attractive employees. Only 64 videos covered work accidents, flooding, protests, or conflicts between employees.

On TikTok, two accounts suspected of being affiliated with IWIP—Iwip Official and Iwip Hits—drove much of the company-aligned narrative. Iwip Official showcased corporate events, including promoting an environmentally friendly image from mangrove planting to World Environment Day. Iwip Hits profiled employees, many of them women, with motivational messages.

But it was not just corporate accounts. IWIP employees and outside content creators were also involved. Three IWIP workers told Tempo that the company hired creators specifically to churn out branding-dance clips. Employees with more than 10,000 followers were tapped as influencers, coordinated through special chat groups.

One employee who became an influencer said the company invited him to spread information about the firm. His posts covered job vacancies and workplace tips. He was added to a special messaging group with members of the public relations and human resources teams, who supplied quick and accurate updates.

According to the source, recruited influencers received special incentives. He declined to reveal how much, but said the company also allowed monetization of the content. His social media earnings ranged from Rp900,000 to Rp4.2 million (around US$50-250) a month, depending on video performance. Posts about mining job vacancies, he added, were the most in demand and the most profitable.

The company enforces strict rules to prevent a flood of content that clashes with its image. Workers are prohibited from recording or posting anything about workplace accidents, project plans and impacts, or activity in hazardous areas.

Copies of the rules were circulated on the Instagram account @torang_iwip on November 24, 2021, and January 28, 2022. Tempo also reviewed IWIP’s employment contracts, which contain clauses barring workers from sharing certain information with outsiders.

Two IWIP labor union leaders confirmed that employees are forbidden to upload accident footage to social media or report incidents to journalists. They said they had heard of workers being warned or even fired after posting about workplace accidents online. Some tried to use anonymous accounts, but the company could still track them down.

One IWIP employee recalled being summoned by management and issued a second warning letter after posting a TikTok message demanding better safety and welfare. He suspected that someone monitored employees’ accounts.

Workers at the nickel processing facility of Indonesia Weda Bay Industrial Park (IWIP) in Lelilef village, Central Weda, Central Halmahera, North Maluku, August 26, 2025. Tempo/Imam Sukamto

Two other workers from companies operating within IWIP said new-hire orientations include lessons on social media rules. During the briefing, managers showed examples of negative content, such as footage of a chaotic May Day protest five years earlier.

By contrast, the company offered incentives for employees who spread content aligned with its image. Staff with large followings were added to special groups.

Muhammad Zulfikar Rakhmat, Director of the Center for Economic and Law Studies, said Chinese companies and their affiliates in Indonesia have expanded their influence on TikTok since 2023. Previously, they built their image through partnerships with national and local media. He believes the surge of positive narratives from nickel mining companies coincided with growing scrutiny by environmental groups over mining’s ecological and safety toll. “They construct an image to make everything look fine,” Zulfikar said.

Kunto Adi Wibowo noted that using employees as influencers creates the illusion that the information comes from the grassroots. In reality, conditions are far different from what is portrayed online. “The narrative creates an illusion of prosperity in the nickel mining sector,” he said.

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SINCE its founding in August 2018, IWIP has been a target of environmental watchdogs. A 2023 geospatial analysis by Climate Rights International (CRI) and the AI Climate Initiative at the University of California, Berkeley, found that 5,331 hectares of tropical forest had been cleared for the nickel industrial park in North Maluku.

IWIP has also built at least five coal-fired power plants, adding to greenhouse gas emissions. Forest Watch Indonesia linked deforestation in the Weda Bay region to 19 floods between 2019 and 2024. The worst, in July 2024, inundated nearby villages.

Research by Ecological Action and People’s Emancipation in 2024 found that mangrove forests and community farms were being razed for IWIP’s supporting infrastructure, including ports, power plants, and coal storage facilities.

Equally troubling, the Mining Advocacy Network (Jatam) documented rivers around Weda Bay were contaminated with nickel, nitrates, and ammonia. Environmental decline has fueled public health problems, including acute respiratory infections. Cases reached 255 in the first half of 2025 alone.

Yusril Muksin, Head of the North Maluku chapter of the Indonesian Metal Workers Federation, said social media clips about IWIP do not reflect reality. Employees face safety risks and meager welfare protections. Wages, he added, are no match for soaring living costs in the nickel industrial area. Renting a room, for example, can eat up half a monthly paycheck. Workers often have to rely on overtime for extra cash. “The more overtime you take, the higher your pay,” he said.

IWIP management sent a written response to Tempo on Thursday, September 25, 2025. They said using social media is a normal practice in the digital era, and claimed they do not restrict employees from posting content.

The company insisted it only sets guidelines for what is appropriate to publish and issues warnings in specific cases. “One of them is if the content relates to security aspects in the workplace,” management wrote.