Kunci helps create critical, smart TV viewers

Kunci helps create critical, smart TV viewers

When asked if their TV monitoring was tightly monitored, students at the Al-Munawwir Islamic boarding school in Krapyak, on the southern outskirts of Yogyakarta, cried in unison, "No!"

When asked why, however, they said it was because there was no television at the boarding school. Still, the students were able to reel off the names of their favorite television programs with little prompting.

"We watch them at a friend's boarding house or at the wartel (public phone kiosk)," the santri, students at an Islamic boarding school, said during a one-day discussion and workshop on television for teenagers. The discussion was held at the boarding school last Sunday.

Some 40 santri, all female and most university and high school students, attended the workshop organized by the Yogyakarta-based cultural study center Kunci, as part of its media literacy program for teenagers.

"This shows that television is so powerful that even students at an Islamic boarding school like this have a way to watch television in secret," Antariksa, an instructor at Kunci, told The Jakarta Post on the sidelines of the workshop.

Introduced earlier this year, Kunci's program is designed to help teenagers build a critical attitude in selecting and watching television programs, and to use the images and information they get from TV for their own benefit.

"We do not deal with the content of programs. There are lots of organizations involved in that. What we are more concerned with is how to develop a certain attitude toward the programs," Antariksa said.

Every community, according to Antariksa, has its own way of consuming television programs. Within a santri community like the one at Al-Munawwir, for example, most students see that many programs, reality shows, for example, are morally wrong, according to the teachings of Islam.

"Watching it on television is like approving the concept of pacaran (having a special relationship with someone of the opposite sex), which is against Islamic teaching," a participant at the workshop said after being exposed to Playboy Kabel, a reality show broadcast by a private TV station.

"I think this kind of program violates the idea of privacy. It broadcasts things that belong in the private domain. It is just not decent to show it in public," another participant said.

Yet, for lots of the students at public school SMU 6 Yogyakarta, where the same workshop was held the previous day, programs like Playboy Kabel are among their favorite shows on television.

"What we are doing, in this case, is making consumers more media-literate. That way teenagers will develop critical attitudes toward programs that many parents consider morally destructive by, for example, looking at the other side of the programs," Antariksa said.

Simply telling teenagers they cannot watch a TV program, according to Antariksa, will not prevent them from being influenced by the programs or from developing consumeristic attitudes.

What is more important, he said, is giving them the knowledge that what is shown on television is not always the same as reality, regardless of whether such programs are called "reality shows". They are just entertainment.

"They must also learn that there are interests behind every program," said Antariksa, who is Kunci's program manager.

Underlining the urgent need to make people in the country more media-literate, Antariksa expressed hope that one day the sort of programs offered by Kunci would be included in the curriculums of junior high schools and high schools around the country.

"There is still a long way to go, but when more and more groups start doing the same thing we are doing, the impact will be accelerated," he said.

It is worrying, according to Antariksa, that at a time when more and more parents are expressing concern about the programs on TV, almost nothing is being done about it, especially with regard to educating the viewing audience.

"We have to make people aware that watching TV is like eating. There are times when we have to avoid junk TV programs, just like we have to leave unhealthy junk food behind," Kunci's director, Nuraini Juliastuti, said.

Established in 1999 as a nonprofit organization for the development of cultural studies, Kunci, according to Nuraini, has a special interest in teenagers.

"This is because teenagers are a very big market for the mass media and they also have the potential to become active, critical consumers," Nuraini said.

Through Kunci's programs, participants are actively involved in discussing, among other things, the meaning of media literacy, their concerns about TV programs, how they usually watch TV, etc.

They are also exposed to recorded TV programs and then are asked to discuss the programs and express their opinions on what they have seen.

In order to reach a wider group of teenagers, Nuraini said, the workshops will be held in September in the East Java town of Gresik. Previously, a similar program was held in Sumbawa, West Nusa Tenggara, involving students from six high schools.

"It is basically a new format for our annual campaigns, which are No Shopping Day and Turn Off TV Week," Nuraini said.

No Shopping Day was held to promote critical attitudes in young people toward consumer culture. The Turn Off TV Week was held to promote a critical attitude toward the mass media. Both programs were held in cooperation with Canada-based non- government organization Adbusters, which supplied Kunci with the campaign materials.

--JP/Sri Wahyuni