Aqida Salma is a PhD candidate in political science and Southeast Asian studies at Goethe University Frankfurt, and a visiting fellow at Cornell University through the AIFIS–Henry Luce Foundation and DAAD research fellowships. She is a scholar of digital politics, focusing on how democracy and authoritarianism evolve through participatory propaganda and the governance of digital crowds. Her latest work on participatory propaganda and the affordances of digital platforms can be found in the April 2025 issue of "Indonesia" (Cornell University Press).