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.