Page 53 - Conflict, Terrorism, and the Media In Asia

42 Jonathan Woodier
the growing impact of cross-border, mass communication media in the Asian
region and beyond.
Following Douglas Kellner’s hegemony model, this Chapter will examine how
Indonesia’s political elites are forcing the media to further their perceived inter-
ests and attempt to restore their gate keeping role over the flow of news and infor-
mation within their borders by forging their own alliances among ‘transnational
corporations, the capitalist state, and communications technologies in the era of
technocapitalism’ (Kellner 1990: 90). Local elites are aware of the centrality of
the media to people’s lives in Southeast Asia, and that they have a battle on their
hands when it comes to controlling the flow of information, facilitated by the
globalisation of the media industry, across and within their borders and, perhaps,
as a consequence maintaining their grip on power.
Across the Asia Pacific region, governments are using the pretext of the ‘war
on terror’to curb basic freedoms or crack down on their domestic opponents. This
has led to what critics describe as an ‘unprecedented abuse’ of individual rights
and freedoms (Reporters without Borders 2002). In Indonesia, this trend could
strengthen even further, supported by a conservative backlash among a middle
class that is troubled by fears for stability as terrorists seem able to attack the
heart of the country’s business district with impunity and also impatient with
the years of economic pain that have followed the fall of Suharto and the onset
of the Asian financial crisis in 1997.
The landslide success of former Security Minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono,
in the presidential elections of September 2004, could be interpreted as a sign that
Indonesians, concerned about unemployment, rising costs and corruption, and
restive after the bomb attacks in Bali and Jakarta, are only too happy for a mili-
tary strongman to restore law and order, even if it is to the detriment of some of
their hard won democratic freedoms, including a plural media. There is, after all,
little in the country’s political culture and in the history of the development of the
media in Indonesia to suggest an instinctive support for democratic pluralism, and
even the market looks set to conspire with traditional pressures to limit titles and
reduce diversity.
Indonesia, however, is no Singapore, where natural logistics allow for an easy
grip on the media. Given the country’s disparate geography and cultural make-up,
and its competing political interests, it will not be simple to nail the lid back on
the Pandora’s Box of Indonesia’s mass communication media. Indeed, as the blasts
from the bombs in Bali and Jakarta continue to echo around the region, govern-
ments seem unable to contain internal unrest amidst deepening economic troubles
and a turbulent sea of social change, raising the question as to whether or not
Indonesia’s political elite can adapt to a world of globalised media culture.
This chapter, then, will examine the implications of the fast information age
and its attendant communications technology on Indonesia. It will look at the sea
change in mass media and communications, whereby the media no longer func-
tions as a mere tool of national government, but is now increasingly accessible to
the ordinary citizen, with dramatic consequences for the political and social fab-
ric of Indonesia and Southeast Asia as a whole. Political activists are increasingly