Page 70 - Conflict, Terrorism, and the Media In Asia

Indonesia: perning in the Gyre 59
the media and the fall of Suharto is hard to draw, ‘in its pores one could see the
impending end’ (Sen and Hill 2000: 1).
The part that communications and the flow of information within the state plays
in defining that state and creating a meaningful homogeneity is played out in full
in Indonesia. As Kellner insists, technological developments and the current round
of global economic integration have ensured that the mass communication media
and its connected apparatus have become increasingly central to daily life in Asia,
even in societies like Indonesia where economic disparities mean the distribution
of media products is uneven. And, that this is affecting the perceptions of the polit-
ical elites with regard to their security and the security of the state, and directly
impacting their behaviour, forcing them to look for ways to bring the media back
into line and restore the gate keeping role lost to technological development.
The end of the Suharto era brought a dramatic change in media freedom and a
growth in the media industry that, itself, has contributed to the emergence of a pub-
lic sphere and civil society. The new media, in particular, is seen as central in the new
democratic process. But, while national level censorship was formally defeated with
the collapse of the Suharto regime in May 1998, in this delicately imagined state,
elements of the old power elite including the military, business and politicians are
seeking to use the media to further their ambitions and interests, as the collapse of
the old Suharto system and the highly centralised state authority has ‘opened the
door for a new struggle to reforge coalitions and build regimes’(Robison 2001: 109).
Indonesia remains an ethnically, socially, economically and religiously diverse
country where tensions were held in place by authoritarianism up to 1998
(Scarpello 2002). Today, at the edges of a shrinking state many journalists includ-
ing the foreign media are under threat. Now, the move to criminalise the work of
journalists and the use of defamation laws to silence critics marks a concerted
effort by the political elites to regain central control over the flow of information
within and across the borders of the state. Internal tensions and external pressures
could provide the military with the reasons it needs to move back into the centre
of the political stage. Already, new and closer political and business alliances are
forming between regional commanders and provincial bosses, as decentralization
changes the dynamics of Indonesian politics.
The battle for the control of the media is also affected by the trends that are
similarly affecting the media around the world, that of commercialisation and the
connected move towards sensationalism, and media concentration remains an
obstacle to the existence of true pluralism. But there is a broader struggle going
on which has an impact on both the security of Indonesia and on media content,
and that is the globalisation of the industry and cross border flows of cultural
products. There has been a growth in access to foreign content, both deliberately
offered by cable TV and slipping across porous borders. In response to, or at least
alongside this wave of cultural products, there is the high-tech mobilization of
radical constituencies, whose voices often speak in opposition to globalisation.
These voices are challenging the authority of the centre, as culture becomes a
factor in both national security and international relations. Thus, however ambiguous
media influence, and flimsy its connections with democracy, the communication