Growth in communication phenomenal
Growth in communication phenomenal
By Ariel Heryanto
SALATIGA, Central Java (JP): Recent developments in the infrastructure of mass communications in Indonesia, as elsewhere, have been phenomenal. What remains less than clear is their impact on people's daily lives. It is most likely that the impact is different from whatever is being dictated by sponsoring agencies.
History teaches us that technology has not simply served our life, facilitated our work or satisfied our desires in more convenient ways. Beyond our will it changes the fundamentals of our lives and working systems. It alters our perception of space, time, and our own identities. It has never become a mere tool for manipulation by its owner, operator or those who legalize its status.
The significance of recent developments in mass communication in Indonesia is more difficult to recognize than the infamous banning of three major weeklies by the government in June last year: DeTik, Tempo, and Editor.
A common reaction here and abroad is that the bannings reaffirm many observers' own belief of the government's repressive character, or of its ability to maintain the effective prowess to be so repressive. Politics is understood primarily as a top-down process, with the state apparatus or its rulers at the apex.
Missing in such observations is the broader picture in historical perspective. Bannings are commonplace under the New Order. No less than 30 media publications have been banned by this administration over the past quarter of a century. But no bans in the past provoked the kind of public outrage that took place at the time of the June 1994 bannings.
Before being banned, DeTik had the biggest circulation of all print media in the country at approximately 600,000 copies. This was accomplished in less than a year of operation. Editor was the smallest among the three recently banned, having an estimated circulation of 60,000 and Tempo was 200,000. In Southeast Asia and the Pacific these figures are not small. Daniel Dhakidae estimates Tempo to be "the largest magazine published in a national language in Asia outside India, Japan, China, Korea and Taiwan." Or even in Asia-Pacific, outside those countries mentioned above plus the United States and Russia.
Among the surviving press, the dailies Kompas and Jawa Pos sell more than half a million copies. In societies like Indonesia approximately five people share each copy. In the near future other print media (there are now more than 150) may catch up with those leading enterprises. That is not the whole story. More subversive are the recent developments in electronically mediated mass communication.
Indonesia is the third country in the world to launch a telecommunication satellite in 1976. When the Sukarno government established the first and sole television station TVRI in 1962, it was intended for educational and propaganda purposes. With a similar attitude, the successive government has managed TVRI since 1966. It has purged advertisements from TVRI since 1981.
With the launching of the private television station RCTI in 1987 it was clear that entertainment and advertisements were irresistible. In 1993 the same government agreed to let four private television stations compete commercially, rendering TVRI obsolete.
Today Western-derived soap operas, videoclips and news dominate the screen, in lieu of the educational items and political propaganda. Last year the government issued the most liberal decree ever. It allows foreign investment to operate in areas previously restricted to state-ownership, including telecommunications.
There are now reportedly approximately 800,000 parabola antennas in Indonesia, including those privately-owned in the homes of ordinary people. These are more than can be found in any other Asian country, except Japan and Taiwan. Each antenna can cater to approximately 40 television sets, or a whole neighborhood as is often the case. Each set entertains more than one extended family.
Mass telecommunications by computer network began rather late in Indonesia. But its expansion is accelerating. In the past few months, the number of subscribers increased by 700 percent, the highest in the whole of Asia, though the absolute number is very small (3,000 among the world's 25 million).
The foregoing example only suggests the conditions for multiple production and reproduction of information. The question is whether it is all there is. Is the change chiefly quantitative: more information, parabola antennas, television sets, and private television stations? More powerful, smaller in size, and yet cheaper computers or mobile-telephones? An ever bigger mass of consumers in a shrinking globe? Or are we witnessing a more qualitative or fundamental transformation of our societal order?
We have no answers, but some of the insights from the postmodernists may be most helpful to understand the social changes taking place across the globe. Central in their sometimes high-flying language is the idea concerning the rise of self- referential images, and the near demise of the two most crucial entities in the modern world: man (the consciously referring subjects) and reality (referents, objects being referred to).
The media becomes less and less a means of communication among men (free, essentially autonomous, rational beings) about reality (things, concepts, events that are independent of man-made language). Information increasingly refers to itself or its own kin (other information). It neither reveals truth/reality in the world, nor conceals, or distorts it. Rather than seeking and reporting events after the fact, the media precedes them. They reconstruct the world, realities, truths, and subjects anew.
The June 1994 bannings illustrate the point well. Far from suppressing information, the bannings freed up more information. More significantly, the surviving media was full of information about the media. But isn't this a very special and rare case? No! Isn't it more and more common for the media to report other media reports? They advertise each other's trading commodity items. They comment on comments previously produced in earlier editions or those from other media. They refer less and less to reality outside the media, real people and the world "out there".
Next to the bannings and the APEC forum (itself a media spectacle per excellence), the dismissal of senior lecturer Arief Budiman from Satya Wacana Christian University in Salatiga was the most widely publicized event in the country in 1994. The case is significant, not simply because of the generous coverage that it received from the media but that it originated in the media, and the media directed its subsequent course of events.
The university concerned is a small one, just like the town where it is located. Most people on this campus know each other personally. But the recent conflict split the academic community, opposing parties launched attacks and counter-attacks mainly through the mediation of the national press, and occasionally through global faxes and e-mail contacts.
The official pretext for Budiman's dismissal was his critical statements about the University's Board of Trustees. But the latter never received Budiman's critiques directly. They only read his statements as mediated in the press. Neither did they bother to demand his explanation afterwards for confirmation.
The dismissal was based on a conviction that the press had mirrored Budiman's original statements, and that the Board had fully understood what these reported statements meant. The case aggregated, following protests from the majority of the faculty and students. Budiman's colleagues were preoccupied with what got printed in the press in order to follow what purported to be taking place in their immediate surroundings.
The failure to recognize how the media works today might have been responsible for the incident in which East Timor youths were shot in Dili in November 1991, or the female labor activist Marsinah was killed in May 1993. Jakarta's strong reaction to the Manila conference on East Timor in 1994 provoked great media attention. This might be what conference organizers had intended. If so, the goal was achieved before the meeting actually started.
The writer is a lecturer at the Post-graduate Program at the Satya Wacana Christian University, Salatiga, Central Java.
Window: A common reaction here and abroad is that the bannings of the media publications reaffirm many observers' own belief of the government's repressive character.