Author: Hill, David T.

Source: South East Asia Research, Volume 15, Number 1, March 2007 , pp. 5-28(24)

Publisher: IP Publishing Ltd

Abstract:

One of the most visible changes to Indonesian public culture since the fall of President Suharto and his New Order in May 1998 has been the florescence of the nation's media. This article is an initial attempt to examine these changes at the local level in the perimeter province of North Sulawesi, about 2,000 kilometres from the political epicentre of Jakarta. Prior to 1998, with only rare exceptions, studies of the Indonesian media - by both Indonesian and foreign scholars - concentrated on the national media. However, since the post-Suharto deregulation of the media and the dismantling of the repressive Department of Information, which had controlled the media centrally, the most dramatic transformation has been driven not from Jakarta but from local media enterprises. At its broadest, this current study of media in North Sulawesi questions whether the collapse of an authoritarian regime and abandonment of media controls axiomatically produce a pluralist democratic media; or whether, equally as likely, they involve the capture of the media by particular political interests, for whom media influence - if not control - is a valuable asset in influencing public opinion and electoral outcomes.

Keywords: DEMOCRATIZATION; ELECTIONS; DECENTRALIZATION; NEWSPAPERS; TELEVISION; SULAWESI

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5367/000000007780420499

Publication date: 2007-03-01

More about this publication?

• South East Asia Research publishes articles based on original research or fieldwork on all aspects of South East Asia within the disciplines of archaeology, art history, economics, geography, history, language and literature, law, music, political science, social anthropology and religious studies. This peer-reviewed journal is published four times per year by IP Publishing in cooperation with the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). SOAS is the leading centre in this field in Europe and one of the most prestigious centres of South East Asian Studies in the world.

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