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Media power in Indonesia : oligarchs, citizens and the digital revolution
 9781786600356, 1786600358

Table of contents :
Introduction : digital media in Indonesia --
The medium and the message --
Digital conglomerates --
Media oligarchs --
Counter-oligarchic media --
Digital ecosystems.

Citation preview

Media Power in Indonesia

Media, Culture and Communication in Asia-Pacific Societies The Asia-Pacific region houses some of the richest and most diverse cultural, media and social practices in the world, with much of it yet to be analysed or uncovered. At the same time, there is a growing scholarly interest in understanding the breadth and depth of culture and media/communication practices in Asian societies. The aim of this series is to support this quest by enabling high-quality accessible and emergent scholarship on culture, media and communication in the Asia-Pacific to be published. It showcases innovative research produced in the region to a global readership with an eye to generating dialogue that will spark new ideas and enhance social and cultural understandings. Series Editors: Terence Lee, Associate Professor, Communication & Media Studies at Murdoch University, Australia Susan Leong, Research Fellow, School of Media, Culture and Creative Arts, Curtin University, Australia Titles in the Series: Media Power in Indonesia: Oligarchs, Citizens and the Digital Revolution, by Ross Tapsell Activism and Digital Culture in Australia, by Debbie Rodan and Jane Mummery (forthcoming) Willing Collaborators: Foreign Partners in Chinese Media, edited by Michael Keane, Brian Yecies and Terry Flew (forthcoming) The Tastes and Politics of Inter-Cultural Food in Australia, by Sukhmani Khorana (forthcoming)

Media Power in Indonesia Oligarchs, Citizens and the Digital Revolution

Ross Tapsell

London • New York

Published by Rowman & Littlefield International Ltd Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26–34 Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB www.rowmaninternational.com Rowman & Littlefield International Ltd. is an affiliate of Rowman & Littlefield 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706, USA With additional offices in Boulder, New York, Toronto (Canada), and Plymouth (UK) www.rowman.com Copyright © 2017 Ross Tapsell All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN:

HB 978-1-78660-035-6

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Tapsell, Ross, author. Title: Media power in Indonesia : oligarchs, citizens and the digital revolution / Ross Tapsell. Description: London : Rowman & Littlefield International, Ltd., [2017] | Series: Media, culture and communication in Asia-Pacific societies | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017015136 (print) | LCCN 2017016760 (ebook) | ISBN 9781786600370 (Electronic) | ISBN 9781786600356 | ISBN 9781786600356 (cloth : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Digital media—Political aspects—Indonesia. | Mass media—Political aspects—Indonesia. | Online journalism—Political aspects—Indonesia. | Mass media—Ownership—Indonesia. | Oligarchy—Indonesia. Classification: LCC P95.82.I5 (ebook) | LCC P95.82.I5 T37 2017 (print) | DDC 079.598—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017015136 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992. Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Acknowledgementsvii Introduction: Digital media in Indonesia

ix

1  The medium and the message

1

2  Digital conglomerates

25

3  Media oligarchs

59

4  Counter-oligarchic media

95

5  Digital ecosystems

125

Conclusion149 Bibliography159 Index169

v

Acknowledgements

My sincere gratitude goes out to all those who took the time to meet me and agreed to be interviewed for this research, all of whom did so at no financial benefit. Thanks to my colleagues at the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific for their support, in particular those colleagues at the ANU’s Indonesia Project. Thanks to Edward Aspinall and David Hill for providing comments on earlier drafts. The support of Indiana University and the people at the ANU-IU Pan Asia Institute, where I spent a sabbatical writing this book, was crucial. Thanks also to the late Dedy Hidayat (University of Indonesia) and Rachma Ida (Airlangga University) and their staff for their assistance and support while I was a visiting fellow at their respective media and communications departments. Finally, terima kasih banyak to my friends in Indonesia for their support, assistance and hospitality to me over the seven years researching this topic. Particular mention to Ele Williams in Yogyakarta, Luthfi Nur Rosyidi in Surabaya, Ratih Permanasari and family in Bali, Nobert Leatemia in Ambon and Arius Jhon Mebri in Jayapura for all their hospitality and assistance. In Jakarta particular thanks to Andrew Henderson and Dyah Pandam Mitayani, Lydia Ruddy, George Roberts, Harry Wicaksana, and Tony and Rennie Gooley.

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Introduction Digital media in Indonesia

Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, or ‘Ahok’ as he is popularly known, is an anomaly in Indonesian politics. An ethnic Chinese in a land where his descendants have stayed away from political positions. A Christian in a majority-Muslim nation. A Sumatran, where the most prominent politicians in Indonesia are from the most populous island of Java. A man who speaks bluntly, curses regularly and gets visibly mad, leading former president Megawati Sukarnoputri to comment, ‘if only we had some magic tape to put [over his mouth]’.1 Yet despite all these traits, Ahok managed to become the governor of Indonesia’s capital city, Jakarta. He did so because his predecessor, Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo, was elected as Indonesia’s president in 2014. The pair were a product of Indonesia’s decentralisation policies, which allowed for direct election of local mayors and regents instead of them being hand-picked by political parties. They were selected as star performers with solid track records in their respective local political roles, and were nominated by major political parties to run for Jakarta governor (Jokowi, PDI Party) and vice-governor (Ahok, Gerindra party) in 2012. Despite being clear underdogs to the incumbents, they won. They did so with the help of many young, urban Indonesians with internet access, who used digital technologies as part of their campaign. Jokowi went on to ride this populist wave all the way to the presidency. As governor, Ahok continued to be an anomaly. In 2014 he withdrew from the Gerindra party when the party wanted to abandon local direct elections, the very avenue that allowed local politicians like Ahok and Jokowi to rise to power. Disliked by much of the political elite, he was described by The New York Times as someone whose ‘target is a political system run by aloof oligarchs’.2 Many of these oligarchs own national media companies, and their news stations regularly depict Ahok as unstable, rude and untrustworthy. In ix

x

Introduction

response, Ahok uploads raw footage on YouTube so viewers can watch full interviews, and when he visits government departments he uploads footage of him openly reprimanding lazy or inefficient bureaucrats. Some of these videos have millions of hits and are shared widely on social media platforms by Indonesia’s netizens. Not allied to a political party, Ahok came under increased pressure from the local parliament over his handling of the city’s budget. His supporters saw this as a backlash against his more transparent and reformist policies, and they rallied around him. Confrontation between the old guard of Indonesia’s political system and a group of pro-Ahok supporters soon escalated. The General Elections Commission, under pressure from political party elites, said Ahok needed a million signatures to run as an independent for re-election as Jakarta governor in 2017. The supporter group, known as Teman Ahok (Friends of Ahok), quickly got to work. They created a smartphone application which enabled Indonesia’s popular Go-Jek motorcycle taxi drivers to pick up signature forms and deliver them to the group’s office at no cost. Go-Jek has been the face of Indonesia’s digital revolution; Jokowi even promoted the company on his trip to the White House, and being allied with a hip new digital company further promoted Ahok’s credentials as a reformer. Teman Ahok claimed to have easily garnered the one million signatures, many with the help of digital technologies. In response, the General Elections Commission said these votes did not count, because they needed to be personally witnessed by an elections official. Their decision was broadcast positively on Indonesia’s large digital media companies where owners have conflicting political interests. Ahok was often represented as running an illegal campaign, while Teman Ahok’s funding model was publicly queried. Ahok decided to join a political party, the PDI-P, and distanced himself from Teman Ahok. Oligarchs and political party mobilisation of street protests became central to a heated Jakarta campaign. Teman Ahok were seemingly no match for mass mobilisation occurring on the streets of the capital as Ahok was branded a kafir (someone who rejects God and the teaching of the Prophet Muhammad) and put on trial for blasphemy for insulting the Koran. At the same time, crucial to the campaign were memes, conspiracy theories, jokes and fake news, all circulated via social media platforms, including many anti-Chinese material. Ahok lost the election, and in its immediate aftermath was found guilty of blasphemy and given a prison sentence of two years. What was the key lesson from Ahok’s political career in Jakarta? Was it how the political elite with their machinations and media pressure forced Ahok to trial and eventually prison? Or did young, urban Indonesians with internet access prove themselves as key political actors in a new era of online engagement, thereby threatening the established order and forcing them to rethink their campaign strategies? The answers you give possibly depend on whether you



Introduction xi

hold optimistic or pessimistic views of the role of new, digital media platforms in today’s society. It might also depend on your existing view of contemporary Indonesia: a country where corruption remains rampant, where elites continue to control the avenues to power, but where a growing number of Indonesians are using digital media platforms with creativity and vigour to push for reforms. This book explains the increasing divergence between political elites and digital citizenry. Its focus is predominantly on the media industry, given the rapid transformation occurring there, and because the media have become a central space for contestation between media owners and ordinary citizens. From the decline of print media and investigative journalism, to the so-called social media ‘revolutions’ in the Middle East, the impact of digital media is hotly debated in scholarship and among the general public. As American scholar Henry Jenkins writes, new, digital platforms are ‘more than simply a technological shift’ but a revolution that ‘alters the relationship between existing technologies, industries, markets, genres, and audiences’.3 The Indonesian case is well suited to probing the way in which digital media impact power relations. As this book will show, Indonesian media owners have become wealthier and maintained a greater share of the market. They have thus become more politically powerful. As a result, the media are becoming far more partisan, sometimes flagrantly pushing the interests of owners. Despite democracy largely flourishing and in the face of a relatively free media environment, this concentration and partisanship heightened. The internet undoubtedly allows for a diverse array of news and views, but the mainstream media remains a dominant space where elites exert their power in the digital era.4 At the same time, bottom-up participatory media forces are increasingly prevalent. Indonesians are some of the most active social media users in the world. Seventy percent of Indonesia’s online population is under the age of 35, most of whom are using social media sites on a daily basis.5 There were 64 million Indonesians with a Facebook account in 2015, the fourth highest in the world, while 20 million Indonesians had a Twitter account, the third highest in the world.6 Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta has been dubbed the world’s ‘most active city on Twitter’, with the most tweets per day sent from the city.7 Digitalisation allows for widespread use of participatory media platforms, enabling citizens to individually and collectively formulate and distribute reformist messages. Many of these messages confront or challenge the power of elites. This book joins the debate around the impact of new technologies on democracy, political economy and power. Thomas Carothers from the Carnegie Endowment of International Peace raises an important point when he writes that we are confronted with a ‘paradox’: The first fifteen years of this century have been a time of astonishing advances in communications and information technology, including digitalization,

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Introduction

mass-accessible video platforms, smart phone, social media, billions of people gaining internet access, and much else. . . . Yet despite these changes, d­ emocracy – a political system based on the idea of the empowerment of individuals – has in these same years become stagnant in the world. . . . Many democracies, both long-established ones and newer ones, are experiencing serious institutional debilities and weak public confidence.8

Indonesia provides a crucial case study to examine this trend. Indonesia has contrasting realities which Carothers touches upon: the unprecedented advance of digital technologies that facilitate individual empowerment, together with concern around the overall health of its democracy.9 The presidency of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (2004–2014) is described by leading scholars of Indonesian studies as not only one of ‘stability’ but also one of ‘stagnation’.10 In 2014 Indonesia faced ‘its most serious threat of authoritarian regression since the transition to democratic rule began in 1998’ when presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto threatened to roll back many of Indonesia’s key democratic reforms.11 Prabowo lost in an incredibly tight race, leading scholars to state that democracy ‘survived’.12 Examining the topic of digital media in a country like Indonesia is no easy task. How can we make sense of the rapidly changing, still-evolving field of digital media studies in one of the world’s most diverse, complex and geographically vast nations? In taking up this challenge, this book will answer two broad questions. First, what is the impact of the digital revolution on the production of news and information? Second, how has the evolution of digital media in Indonesia affected the way power is exerted? It will answer these questions predominantly through an examination of Indonesia’s media industry and the power structures that operate within it. I argue that new, digital technologies are pulling Indonesia in two directions. On the one hand, digitalisation enables oligarchs to control the mainstream media realm and encourages a centralised elite power structure around politics and the media. At the same time, digital media platforms are used by citizens for activist and liberatory purposes, and ordinary citizens can challenge elite power structures through effective use of digital media. The divergent aims are between oligarchs who own communications infrastructure and media companies, and netizens who are a select amalgam of Indonesians who have regular access to the internet. It is these groups whose political autonomy is most enhanced by digitalisation, and it is these groups that are utilising new technologies to lobby the forces which control Indonesian society. We cannot understand contemporary Indonesia without probing into how these forces are at work. These empowered groups will have a vast and far-reaching impact on Indonesian politics and culture in the ensuing years.



Introduction xiii

DIGITAL MEDIA OLIGARCHS The first part of this book explains the rejuvenated power of media moguls in the digital era. It argues that digitalisation of media is creating a highly oligarchic media system. Digitalisation enables wealthy, powerful media companies to expand their reach. The convergence of platforms allows for increased concentration and conglomeration of the industry, leading to an increasingly oligopolistic media landscape. Put simply: digitalisation enables big media to become bigger. My research shows that digitalisation has been a tool of media oligarchs to consolidate the industry and reduce the diversity of viewpoints in mainstream news. Why should we look to Indonesia to understand media power? While almost everyone agrees that there is no single world of digital media,13 much of the scholarship remains Western-centric. In 2000, Curran and Park wrote of the ‘self-absorption and parochialism of much Western media theory’. They argued that ‘the same few countries keep recurring as if they are a stand-in for the rest of the world. They are nearly always rich Western societies’.14 Over 15 years later, little has changed. Research on converging digital technologies is being described as ‘a revolution that is sweeping the media industries’,15 yet scholarly studies continue to focus largely on the United States and the United Kingdom, especially when examining the role of the media in a democracy.16 When scholars do attempt to compile studies of the world’s media, they neglect Southeast Asia. A recent example is the book Who Owns the Media? Media Concentration and Ownership around the World, which includes research from 29 different countries, and 5 within East Asia, yet does not include any country or regional study of Southeast Asia.17 Scholars are being urged to ‘re-visit’ the impact of media through a study of ‘the diverse social and historical contexts in which they are situated’, and ‘to rethink how they can fruitfully explore the challenges and opportunities that digital media present in various contexts’.18 In discussing the power and influence of media owners, most of us in the Western world think immediately of Rupert Murdoch, given his dominance in the English-language media of the United States, United Kingdom and Australian market. But it is important to note that the Rupert Murdoch model of media ownership is unique. Murdoch’s media empire stretches over a wide range of countries and continents, yet has ‘a unique appreciation for the dynamics of local markets’, making him ‘the most complex, creative, and contradictory of the moguls, both personally and in the conglomerate he has built’.19 Murdoch’s media companies exert their influence predominantly in countries with a two-party electoral democracy system. Unlike media moguls elsewhere (including, as we shall see, in Indonesia), the Murdoch family do

xiv

Introduction

not seek direct political positions, either via elections or by appointment. His media explicitly campaign for candidates (usually conservative political parties) but always in the context of a two-party preferred system. In contrast, countries such as Indonesia maintain a multiparty democratic system. Numerous parties can bring their leader to power as president and win a majority of seats in the Parliament. As we shall see, owners of Indonesia’s media companies have direct affiliations with political parties, and have been appointed in positions of the government. This is not to say that questions which arise from scholarship pertaining to Rupert Murdoch or political economy studies of the West are irrelevant for this research, but it is important to render precise and contextualised accounts of how media owners exert their power and influence. This book will do so in the context of Indonesia, showing how national media moguls have become increasingly powerful players in politics, and in contributing to a vastly more partisan coverage of news and information. The rise of media owners as political candidates is an emerging issue for developing countries around the world. Media barons are often directly involved in political parties where a free press coexists with a multiparty system. For example, in the Philippines, often described as having the freest media system in Asia, the 2004 elections saw one presidential candidate, two vice-presidential candidates and no less than ten Senate candidates having media or entertainment industry backgrounds.20 In India, newspapers are largely owned by business barons, with an increasing trend of these businessmen entering politics.21 In Honduras, President Carlos Roberto Flores is a media owner whose success stemmed in part from the support of his newspaper and other media owners with similar values.22 In Nigeria, current and former political leaders of political parties own national media outlets which vigorously represent their interests by building political agendas.23 In Kenya, Uhuru Kenyatta is the country’s richest man and prime minister, who owns television, radio and newspapers.24 Where a multiparty democracy exists, media owners form political parties, and politicians start media companies, in order to enhance their political capital. This research outlines the rise of the national media mogul, and its conclusions are crucial to understanding the way digitalisation empowers media owners, in Indonesia and elsewhere. In many ways, media companies in Southeast Asia have been far more nimble and strategic in adapting to the digital era than media companies in the West as far as business models are concerned. In one rare case of scholarly research on the media industry in Southeast Asia, Duncan McCargo explains that ‘prominent media ‘businesses’ are not profitable in a conventional sense’, as they have long been cross-subsidised by other arms of a larger business conglomerate.25 As McCargo writes, ‘it might equally be the case that Western patterns of media-politics relations could soon begin to unravel along



Introduction xv

“Asian” or non-Western lines – if, indeed, this is not already happening’.26 In short, the West does not always lead the way in new media innovation, nor are the ways in which media companies and users utilise new technologies formulaic around the world. As opposed to the regulatory environments of the West, Indonesia’s regulations around media ownership have been weak or not enforced. As a result, Indonesia’s media owners have mostly been able to navigate the digital era with much freedom. Very quickly, they no longer simply own a newspaper or a television station but are now in charge of large multi-platform conglomerates. The capitalist media in Indonesia dominate the market by becoming ‘digital conglomerates’, using advances in communications technologies to create a more efficient multi-platform newsgathering operation, while at the same time purchasing competitors. The cost of advancing communications infrastructure technologies, such as television towers, cable or satellite operators, remains affordable only to wealthy conglomerates. Smaller companies do not have the existing capital to keep pace with the digital conglomerate behemoths to invest in this multi-platform infrastructure. Thus, digitalisation does not enable a more diverse and kaleidoscopic mainstream media realm to flourish in Indonesia but rather enables a more concentrated industrial media to be a prominent space where elites exert their power. As a result of this oligopolistic mainstream media structure, media moguls are growing in wealth and political power. Given the increasing direct links between media companies and political parties, Indonesian mainstream media coverage of politics is far more partisan in the digital era, in no small part due to the nature of this multi-oligarchic system that has emerged. An oligarchic media system is of course not limited to Indonesia. The nature and influence of media ownership are discussed and debated in most democracies around the world.27 However, the role of oligarchy has been central to how scholars discuss how power operates in Indonesia. American political scientist Jeffrey Winters describes oligarchs as ‘actors who command and control massive concentrations of material resources that can be employed to defend or enhance their personal wealth and exclusive social position’.28 The oligarchy thesis posits that democratic institutions have ‘enabled, rather than constrained’ Indonesia’s oligarchs since the reformasi period.29 Winters’ ‘actor-oriented approach’30 describes Indonesia’s oligarchs as ‘untamed’ with ‘no inherent limitations’ imposed on them by electoral democracy. Australia-based scholars of Indonesian political economy Richard Robison and Vedi Hadiz have argued that while an authoritarian government no longer exists, Indonesia’s new era of democracy since 1998 is dominated by oligarchs, through ‘the reorganization of the old predatory power relations within a new system’ by those who have ‘interests in maintaining a system of arbitrary power’.31 While Robison and Hadiz state that

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Introduction

the oligarchic thesis does not mean ‘nothing has changed in Indonesia’, they emphasise that ‘many of the old faces continue to dominate politics and business, while new ones are drawn into the same predatory practices that had defined politics in Indonesia for decades’.32 For scholars who see oligarchy as the dominant paradigm by which to understand contemporary Indonesia, it would then logically follow that Indonesia’s media industry would be dominated by oligarchs too. Robison and Hadiz include ‘media control’ in their definition of what determines an oligarchy, while Winters points to media oligarchs as central to his argument in the case of Indonesia.33 As represented by this group of scholars, two things are true regarding Indonesia’s media. First, oligarchic owners generally shape news and information according to their wishes, which means, as Winters states: ‘insofar as the media are heavily dominated by the same actors and political forces, it is unlikely that a critical free press or parties will provide the venues and vehicles for challenging this particular form of oligarchic domination’.34 Second, and as a result of the first, candidates running in elections ‘must buy media access, which in some cases has meant buying television and radio stations and newspapers outright’.35 As a result, the power of oligarchs to frame debate and discussion in the public sphere is evident. Jokowi’s victory was not only a defining moment in Indonesia’s political history but also a focus point for debates around the role of oligarchy in Indonesian politics and society. Not part of the established former New Order hierarchy, Jokowi’s ascendance to the presidency was assisted by Indonesians who campaigned for a man they saw as not part of the oligarchic elite. In keeping with his argument that ‘electoral democracy presents no inherent limitations on oligarchs’,36 Jeffrey Winters argues that Jokowi’s victory in Jakarta’s election could not have occurred without the oligarchs Prabowo Subianto and his millionaire brother, Hashim Djojohadikusumo. Winters believes ‘only oligarchs had the power resources to convert Jokowi’s potential as candidate into a reality,’ and while ‘scores’ of groups helped him to power, he would never have been chosen in the first place if it were not for the oligarchs.37 Robison and Hadiz argued that Jokowi ‘had to enter dubious alliances’ with oligarchs during his campaign for governor of Jakarta, in particular with Prabowo’s Gerindra party.38 Indeed, Jokowi’s campaign for Jakarta governor was well funded by the Gerindra party, among other initiatives, and spent significant amounts on television advertising. To win the race for president, Jokowi was forced to ally himself with various New Order oligarchs, including media moguls. As Hadiz wrote, Jokowi is still ‘embedded in the system of oligarchy even if he does not hail from a powerful oligarchic family’, and does not represent a significant break from past presidents.39 This book does not set out to explicitly prove or disprove the oligarchy thesis. Observers of Indonesian politics note that the role of oligarchs contributes



Introduction xvii

much to our understanding of contemporary Indonesian politics. The media (and digital media in particular) are central to any discussion of oligarchic power within contemporary Indonesian society. I argue that digitalisation enables conglomeration and concentration in Indonesia in an increasingly oligopolistic mainstream media landscape. It explains how media companies are more dynastic, where key family members inside these digital conglomerates influence news and editorial content to promote owners’ political agendas. Thus, this book will examine the power of media oligarchs in contemporary Indonesia, arguing that they are crucial to the production of news and information in the country. But oligarchs are not the only group who have their political agency emancipated by digitalisation. Digital media is increasingly a venue whereby Suharto-era oligarchic power and dominance are openly challenged. Certainly, rich individuals dominate the political economy of the media industry in Indonesia, as they do in many other democracies around the world. But the ability of digital media to negate elite influence by enabling ‘counter-oligarchic’ actors shows the political agency of another group of Indonesians acting through what they see as popular consensus. As a result, digital media is a key space of contestation where media oligarchs and popular forces are vying to control. CITIZENS AND ‘COUNTER-OLIGARCHIC’ DIGITAL PLATFORMS This research explains the enabling power of digital media in promoting reform. Digital media are allowing citizens to usurp elite messages, shifting the course of events in Indonesian politics and society. In an increasingly participatory media environment, citizens are manipulating the flow of news to create ‘counter-oligarchic’ media moments of change. Whether through social media shares, mass-driven clicks of news articles, memes or locally produced videos, digital media are often used to usurp oligopolistic media content. The impact of citizen-driven digital media sites varies greatly, but their mere existence is crucial to ‘bottom-up’ grass-roots-driven movements. Politicians are wary of backlash via digital media sites, and regularly measure sentiment on these platforms to gauge the views of the public. Digital media enables considerable reforms to be made, as internet penetration grows and as netizens use these new platforms to advocate for various causes. The dynamic capacity of the internet to connect and transmit information is causing rapid changes to communications globally. People are using digital media to organise mass rallies, assist with clean elections and provide a space for greater freedom of opinion and expression. Individual citizens

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Introduction

are maintaining their own digital media sites such as blogs, Facebook pages and YouTube channels, and are doing so usually at minimal financial cost. Scholars are debating how and to what extent these ‘mediated communities’ are transforming news production and consumption.40 Developments in digital technology in the twenty-first century have produced an increasingly ‘networked’ media society.41 Rather than focus solely on the obstacles to a more democratic media, Jenkins urges scholars of digital media to strive towards an examination of the ‘more complex relations between top-down corporate media and bottom up participatory culture’.42 This book examines these forces together, explaining the rise of digital conglomerates and media oligarchs mentioned previously, but at the same time noting the importance of ‘bottom-up’ forces. Indonesia is a crucial place for examining the role of digital media in empowering bottom-up forces. It is the fourth most populous country in the world, with a population of over 250 million people. Like many other countries, Indonesia has experienced significant population growth in its cities; the United Nations has predicted that by 2025 around 50% of the population would live in urban areas.43 It is considered a young country with a median age of 28 (compared to, say, 38 in Australia and 40 in Britain) and the emergence of a new consumer class with higher purchasing power has changed media consumption and lifestyle patterns.44 Indonesians’ entrance to the internet is now more likely to be via inexpensive Chinese-made mobile phones, rather than through a traditional warnet (internet shop). In 2011, of the 55 million Indonesians who connected to the internet, around 33% did so via mobile phones.45 By 2016, it was estimated that outside of the top cities, 79% of consumers accessed digital platforms via a mobile phone.46 As with internet access, there was a great disparity in mobile phone usage. Less than 40% of adult Papuans owned a mobile phone, compared with 97% of adult Jakartans.47 Indonesia’s internet penetration is expected to grow considerably in the next decade, but even with this large digital divide, the numbers of internet users in Indonesia reached 100 million in 2016.48 Many Indonesians who do use new media sites do so ubiquitously. A study by Indiana University compared the use of social media in political participation in five countries in Asia (Indonesia, Taiwan, China, Thailand and Japan) and found that Indonesia was the country with the highest share of social network users (71.6%) who use social media for the purposes of consuming news.49 One survey states that Indonesians spend an average of five hours a day online, with this number expected to be much higher in bigger cities with long commutes to work.50 While Jakarta users reign on Twitter, the city was also declared as having the worst traffic in the world, a correlation not to be underestimated.51 For this and many other reasons, executives in Indonesia’s media companies describe those under the age of 35 as ‘generation always on’.



Introduction xix

Yet statistics do not always tell the full story. Precise figures of internet penetration are unreliable because (as one example) many rural Indonesians do not think using Facebook on their mobile phone is using the internet.52 In her research exploring the ‘improbability’ of a nation spanning 54,000 kilometres and 250 million people, journalist Elisabeth Pisani said it was not unusual to see young people in villages climbing trees or hills in order to get phone reception to check their Facebook status; ‘Millions of Indonesians live on $2 a day and are on Facebook’, she wrote.53 As anyone who has been to Indonesia knows, it is not uncommon for Indonesians to create a second Facebook account, one for public consumption, the other for people they know reasonably well. Many Indonesians use Facebook so much they have well over 1,000 ‘friends’, many of whom they have never met in person. Much of this online activity is for social purposes; following on from the common expression in Indonesia to ‘main internet’ (‘play the internet’). On social media sites, users regularly write openly about life, love, politics, inspiration and religion. Sometimes this gets them into serious trouble with authorities. In one high-profile example, Sumatran Alexander Aan started a Facebook page for atheists in 2012, and was attacked by an angry mob and later found guilty of ‘disseminating information aimed at inciting religious hatred or hostility’.54 He was given a two-and-a-half-year jail sentence. This and other important exceptions aside, social media have undoubtedly allowed for greater freedom of expression and opinion throughout the archipelago. Indonesians are living in a period of great freedom to express their opinions via new forms of media platforms. This book argues that digital media platforms are becoming a key avenue for reformist agendas in Indonesia. Most Indonesians have little faith in the police or justice system, given these institutions’ reputation for corruption and for being controlled by powerful elites. When citizens are aggrieved by a particular policy of the government, Indonesians rarely appeal to their local parliamentarians. The anti-corruption commission is weak. Protests remain a part of Indonesian society in both the capital and the outer regions, but when many young Indonesians wish to express their disappointment with government or elite decisions, they are increasingly doing so online. Digital media platforms are sometimes the first avenue Indonesians turn to when aggrieved, and one rare space where they feel they have some ability to effect change. Of course, it is important to state that not all Indonesians have access to the internet. The ‘netizens’ described in this book are predominantly urban, middle-class, young, with regular access to the internet, and who have the skills to use these digital platforms to great effect. Officially, Indonesia’s internet penetration remains around 25%, with around four-fifths of Indonesia’s internet users on the main islands of Java and Sumatra. Indonesians outside of urban areas lack digital skills to do more than simply access

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messenger sites which can operate on a low bandwidth. Thus, digital media platforms create an empowered minority in Indonesia. The empowered minority can give a distorted voice to those without internet access. One example includes the now-infamous Jakarta ‘satay seller’. According to one social media post in the aftermath of a terrorist attack in 2015, this man continued to sell food on the side of the road despite the terrorist attack being nearby. The author of the post (with accompanying photo of the satay seller) argued that this was typical of how Indonesians responded to terrorism: without fear and getting on with life.55 The message transcended media platforms. Yet when a professional journalist took the time to interview him the next day, the satay seller admitted that he was indeed quite scared but was reluctant to leave his stall for fear that someone might steal it.56 It would seem the satay seller’s story actually told us more about poverty in Indonesia than it did about countering terrorism, but the message Indonesia’s netizens attributed to his action was the dominant one in most news stories and on social media platforms. This research explains how this group of Indonesian netizens are using digital platforms to encourage reforms. They are doing so in ways which are often different from the campaigns and initiatives in the West, and digital media is central to enable the political agency of counter-oligarchic popular forces. Thus, we cannot understand how power operates in contemporary Indonesia without taking into account the role of this empowered minority and how they interact with digital media. Despite being activities for urban middle classes, digital content is no longer only on ‘the fringes’, but is now central to activist and liberationary agendas.57 This book will show that media civic engagement and political participation have become fiercely intertwined. Digital media is a space where individual citizens are collectively encouraging new forms of campaign material production, disseminated en masse by volunteers and Indonesia’s increasingly online, social media–savvy youth. A second strand of scholarship to the oligarchy approach is one described as the ‘pluralist’ approach,58 which focuses on the process of Indonesia’s democratisation ‘from below’, through ‘power, class, political agency, and influence’.59 These arguments were explicitly set out in the book Beyond Oligarchy.60 Edward Aspinall argues in his essay that a key avenue for lower-class influence in politics is ‘electoral populism’ based on his observations that, since 2005, ‘a near revolutionary shift in the nature of Indonesian politics has taken place’. While emphasising the complexity and contestation of oligarchic powers and subordinate groups, Aspinall, Marcus Mietzner and others point to the influence of ‘popular forces in Indonesian politics’ as evidence that the power of oligarchy should be questioned. In critiquing oligarchy theory, these scholars argue that there should be an examination of



Introduction xxi

both the ‘oligarchic and non-oligarchic forces in equal measure’ through ‘a more compelling and empirically satisfying manner’.61 This is particularly relevant for digital media, given the way in which popular forces are using new media platforms to bring about change, and to usurp the wishes of oligarchs. As Aspinall writes, popular forces in Indonesia reflect ‘the complexity of Indonesian democracy and the kaleidoscopic patterns of social interest that underpin it’.62 Pluralist scholars disagree with oligarchy theorists as to the consequences of Jokowi’s election as president. Jokowi’s victory is considered a break from the oligarchic New Order–era rulers who have dominated Indonesian media and politics since 1998. Mietzner argues that Jokowi ‘was not the oligarch’s choice’, but rather ‘an unwelcome phenomenon they had to come to terms with . . . his election was evidence that Indonesia’s oligarchs are not omnipotent’.63 Aspinall argues that the ‘bulk of Indonesia’s major oligarchs’ fell behind Prabowo, who excelled in ‘patronage-driven politics and oligarchic deal-making’, whose victory would have taken Indonesia in a ‘more authoritarian direction’, making this a ‘yawning difference’ from Jokowi’s campaign and what he represents.64 I argue that Jokowi’s rise represents a new, media-darling form of popular politician, driven by widespread coverage of a unique form of digitally savvy governance. Many people who supported Jokowi’s campaign did so through volunteer groups and social media platforms, and by many citizens who yearned for news of a politician who represented a break from the familiar faces of Indonesian politics. Jokowi’s ascendency from local mayor to become president in a period of only two years shows that rather than submitting to the same old practices of oligarchy, new initiatives to gain political momentum were forged. The media were indeed a vehicle for the rise of Jokowi, and the Suharto-era oligarchic power and dominance were openly and spectacularly challenged. How Indonesia’s oligarchs respond to the other popular media-savvy politicians and how digitalisation is impacting these forces are now central to any examination of Indonesian politics and society. DIGITAL POWER: DIVERGENT INDONESIA This research argues that digitalisation is pulling media, politics and society in Indonesia in two directions. Digital media is a prominent place of contestation between large, powerful oligarchs and citizens looking to bring about rapid and meaningful change. This book examines how the political agencies of both oligarchs and netizens are enhanced by digitalisation, and how an increasingly divergent society is being formed. In doing so, this book enters this debate about the transformations of society and power in the digital age.

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Some scholars see digital technologies as emancipatory ‘networks of outrage and hope’ that promote a more ‘radical’ version of democracy.65 Others are far less optimistic, and aim to debunk what they see as the ‘delusion’ that the internet creates a ‘more open and egalitarian world’.66 The polarising answers to these debates are summed up best by Sanz when he concludes: ‘Optimists see the new media landscape as a source of potentially endless expansion of choice for individuals, and as a liberating force from political and commercial control. Pessimists see a serious social problem in the proliferation of productions of poor quality, with only a few media conglomerates able to survive’.67 So where does Indonesia fit in this debate? This book explains that oligarchs and netizens are both empowered by digitalisation. I argue that digitalisation consolidates oligarchic power in three main areas: a) Mainstream, industrial media: despite the potential for the internet to reduce the influence of media owners, mainstream media remains a prominent place where elites exert their power. b) Elite wealth and political influence: media owners have become wealthier and politically powerful in the digital era. c) Business and capital: digitalisation enables conglomeration of media with other online businesses, which sees a concentration of capital and business around the digital economy. But this book also shows that digitalisation also provides spaces for empowerment of citizenry in three main ways: a) Democratic processes: digital media encourage the process of electoral campaigning to win office by popular consensus rather than elite machinations, and enables greater transparency of elections results. b) Public discourse: digital media are undoubtedly allowing for a growing number of citizens to participate in discussions, shape media content and lobby politicians in order to have their voices heard. c) Encouraging policy reforms: Digital media are becoming an important avenue for popular reformist agendas. In this instance, citizenry revolves mostly around an empowered minority of young, urban, middle class with internet access and digital ‘skills’ to be central players in political outcomes. Digital media are becoming central to key spaces of contestation around political and economic reforms. They may not always achieve their goals, but power contestations between elites and citizenry will continue to be conducted in the digital media space. These groups are pushing Indonesia is in very different directions, leading to a divergent society.



Introduction xxiii

For oligarchs, digital media power now includes industries of transport, gaming, banking, polling and much more. Media companies are leading players in the e-commerce and digital economy space. In this regard, this book traces the death of media companies as we have come to know them – as a business predominantly existing to produce content – and charts the rise of ‘digital power’. Many Indonesians feel that digital media platforms are a key place to challenge society’s rigid power structures. Governments, elites and oligarchs know this, and push back via control of digital spaces, be it throughout conglomeration of digital businesses, crackdowns on individuals through laws and regulations or on emphasising the role of digitalisation as a space to tighten surveillance and security. Indonesia’s netizens are taking Indonesia in a different direction. Citizens are using digital media platforms to advocate for government transparency and accountability. They use digital media to promote and encourage new candidates to pursue reformist agendas. These netizens are largely part of Indonesia’s urban middle class, but, as this book will show, it is not only the tech-savvy Jakarta-elite that matter here. How citizens use social media for sharing content, clicking articles and bringing issues into the mainstream media realm are equally important considerations. A growing number of Indonesians are participating in online deliberations, shaping media content and lobbying to have their voices heard, and this is pushing Indonesia in a direction of more discursive democracy through technological advancements in crowdsourcing, social media sentiment and online public discourse. The focus of this book is Indonesia’s mainstream media industry, from its largest, national media conglomerates to its smallest, locally produced news sites. My core research was conducted in the capital city, Jakarta, where Indonesia’s large media companies maintain their head offices and where Indonesia’s politicians and lawmakers reside. Material for this book includes extensive personal interviews with Jakarta-based media oligarchs. However, my research also includes time spent in newsrooms in the provinces of Java, Bali, Lombok, Maluku and Papua. It includes material from personal interviews with media owners, editors, journalists, politicians, policy-makers, campaign professionals and grass-roots digital media activists from around the country. Scholars of Indonesian society should see this book as a crucial update of existing literature on the media landscape in Indonesia, given the dramatic technological changes that have occurred due to digitalisation over the past 15 years. I conducted research on each corporation, and, where possible, interviewed owners or executives with these conglomerates to hear their company’s business models and key strategies in the digital era. The material shows how digital conglomerates dominate the landscape, and how power is exerted by owners. It explains the dynastic nature of media companies,

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and how news has become increasingly partisan. The material also shows how media companies are managing new forms of engagement, and how netizens manage or manipulate the flow of media content within these media companies. It explains how digitalisation is affecting the political agency of certain groups, due to the transformations in the way news is produced and consumed. Chapter two explains that when new media technologies are introduced to Indonesia, it has a profound impact on politics and society. Whether it be the printed press, television or the internet, whenever a new media platform emerges the political agency of a particular group of society is improved. Digital media is the new technology and we must now examine the political agency it gives to a certain group of people. In this chapter we hear how digital media did not enter Indonesia in a vacuum, but rather a portal within other pre-existing media technologies. While many scholars and commentators were optimistic about the role the internet would play in changing power structures within Indonesian society, they failed to recognise the rise of media owners who used new digital technologies to advance their political and business capital. Chapter three explains the political economy of the media in Indonesia in the digital era. It outlines the major digital conglomerates and explains their rise to dominate the media landscape. It argues that while big media are getting bigger in the digital era, smaller media are dying out or finding it difficult to survive. Media conglomeration sees many smaller- or medium-sized media companies purchased by larger companies. Concentration of the media industry leads to a more oligopolistic media landscape, and this chapter argues that most of the large digital conglomerates have similar business models and objectives, and produce relatively similar content. For the most part, they are a capital-city-based production house where content is distributed to a national audience in numerous platforms. Chapter four outlines the political connections of Indonesia’s media owners. It shows that Indonesia’s media landscape is increasingly partisan; the 2014 elections were far more partisan in coverage of presidential candidates than the elections of 2009 or 2004. The reasons for this are that Indonesia’s media owners have become wealthier and more politically powerful in the digital era. At the same time, Indonesia’s digital conglomerates are far more dynastic. Many of these companies have family members as editors, managers or chief executive operators. When forced to choose between the interests of the family or the interests of the media business, the family’s political interests often weigh more strongly. There are clearly causes for concern regarding the way in which digitalisation has empowered oligarchs. But the flip side is that the bottom-up forces



Introduction xxv

of Indonesia’s urban youth are also empowered by digital media. Rather than see digital platforms as a space to concede to industrial media, they have become key spaces of contestation over ideas, reform and usurping powerful elite. Chapter five shifts the focus from owners to citizens. It explains how digital media initiatives are also ‘counter-oligarchic’, and looks specifically at the rise of Jokowi and those who brought him to power. This chapter also examines the rise of the prod-user (someone who produces and consumes media content) and how this group of netizens use digital media platforms to bring about reforms. Chapter six focuses on emerging areas of study in the digital realm, the integration of other industries within the ‘digital’, including the political economy of social media sites. It also emphasises the role of the state and public broadcasting, and how these spaces will be key enablers of agency for both oligarchs and netizens. It describes these trends as an emerging digital ecosystem. The final chapter concludes with a discussion of where Indonesia is headed, arguing that convergent media are creating a divergent society. Oligarchs use mainstream industrial media to push their individual political agendas, while at the same time attribute Indonesia’s middle-class upward mobility being advanced by pro-business policies which ultimately benefit their own companies. Netizens are taking Indonesia in a bolder direction. They are driven largely by a younger generation frustrated by slow changes to politics and governance, including a corrupt and inefficient bureaucracy. This group sees new, digital technologies as the main conduit for speeding up reforms. NOTES 1. ‘A Political Contract for Ahok’, Tempo magazine, 27 September 2016, accessed 14 October 2016, https://magz.tempo.co/konten/2016/09/27/LU/32192/ A-Political-Contract-for-Ahok/06/17. 2. Joe Cochrane, ‘Governor of Jakarta Bucks Indonesia’s Party Politics’, New York Times, 5 June 2016, accessed August 12, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/ 06/05/world/asia/indonesia-jakarta-governor-basuki-ahok.html?_r=0. 3. Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (New York University Press, New York and London, 2006), 15. 4. Martin Hirst, News 2.0: Can Journalism Survive the Internet? (Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 2011). 5. Freedom House, ‘Freedom on the Net 2015: Indonesia’, accessed 13 April 2017, https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/2015/indonesia. 6. Freedom House ‘Indonesia’.

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7. Ranked by the number of posted tweets, from data released on 31 July 2012, by France-based social media monitor Semiocast. See Erwida Maulia, ‘Jakarta Named “Most Active Twitter City” in Recent Study’, Jakarta Globe, 31 July 2012, accessed January 20, 2015, http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/news/jakarta/jakartanamed-most-active-twitter-city-in-recent-study/. 8. Thomas Carothers, ‘Why Technology Hasn’t Delivered More Democracy’, Foreign Policy, 3 June 2015, accessed 1 April 2016, http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/06/03/ why-technology-hasnt-delivered-more-democracy-democratic-transition/. 9. Ibid. 10. Edward Aspinall, Marcus Mietzner and Dirk Tomsa (eds.), The Yudhoyono Years: Indonesia’s Decade of Stability and Stagnation (ISEAS, Singapore, 2015). 11. Edward Aspinall, ‘Oligarchic Populism: Prabowo Subianto’s Challenge to Indonesian Democracy’, Indonesia 99 (2015), 1. 12. See, for example, Aspinall, ‘Oligarchic Populism’, 29, and Marcus Mietzner, ‘Indonesia’s 2014 Elections: How Jokowi Won and Democracy Survived’, Journal of Democracy 25, 4 (2014), 111–125. 13. Nick Couldry, Media, Society, World: Social Theory and Digital Media Practice (Polity Press, London, 2012), 9. 14. James Curran and Myung-Jin Park, ‘Beyond Globalisation Theory’, in Curran and Park (eds.), De-Westernizing Media Studies (Routledge, London, 2000), 3. 15. Jeffrey Wilkinson and August Grant, ‘Introduction’, in Wilkinson and Grant (eds.), Understanding Media Convergence: The State of the Field (Oxford University Press, New York, 2009), 15. 16. For example see Tim Dwyer, Media Convergence (McGraw Hill, New York, 2010), 111–115; G. Meikle and S. Young, Media Convergence: Networked Digital Media in Everyday Life (Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2012); J. Pavlik and S. McIntosh, Converging Media: A New Introduction to Mass Communication (Oxford University Press, New York, 2011). 17. Eli Noam (ed.), Who Owns the Media? Media Concentration and Ownership around the World (Oxford University Press, New York, 2016). 18. Florian Schneider and Chris Goto-Jones, ‘Revisiting the Emancipatory Potential of Digital Media in Asia’, Asiascape: Digital Asia 1 (2014), 3. 19. Jonathan Knee, Bruce Greenwald and Ava Seave, The Curse of the Mogul: What’s Wrong with the World’s Leading Media Companies (Portfolio, New York, 2009), 246. 20. K. Seneviratne, ‘Journalism by Whom, for Whom?’, in Cherian George (ed.), Free Markets, Free Media? Reflections on the Political Economy of the Press in Asia (Singapore: Nanyang University Press, 2008). 21. K. Prasad, ‘The False Promise of Media Liberalization in India’, in George (ed.), Free Markets, Free Media?. 22. Rick Rockwell and Noreene Janus, History of Communication: Media Power in Central America (University of Illinois Press, 2003), 13–29. 23. Yusuf Kalyango Jr., African Media and Democratization: Public Opinion, Ownership and Rule of Law (Peter Lang, Portland, 2011), 152–153. 24. See Noha Mellor et al., Arab Media: Globalisation and Emerging Media Industries (Polity, 2011), 152–153. Also Francis Simiyu Tome, ‘Media Ownership



Introduction xxvii

and Framing in Kenya: A Study of the ICC Case against Uhuru Kenyatta’, Open Science Repository Communication and Journalism, Online (2013), e70081924. doi:10.7392/Research.70081924. 25. See Duncan McCargo, ‘Partisan Polyvalence: Characterizing the Political Role of Asian Media’, in Daniel Hallin and Paolo Mancini (eds.), Comparing Media Systems beyond the Western World (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2012), 201–223. 26. Ibid., 217. 27. See Robert McChesney, The Political Economy of the Media – Enduring Issues, Emerging Dilemmas (Monthly Review Press, New York, 2008). 28. Jeffrey Winters, Oligarchy (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2011), 157. 29. Ibid., 180. 30. Marcus Mietzner, ‘Reinventing Asian Populism: Jokowi’s Rise, Democracy, and Political Contestation in Indonesia’, Policy Studies 72 (2015), 6. 31. Richard Robison and Vedi Hadiz, Reorganising Power in Indonesia: The Politics of Oligarchy in an Age of Markets (Routledge, New York, 2004), 223–224. 32. Richard Robison and Vedi Hadiz, ‘The Political Economy of Oligarchy and the Reorganization of Power in Indonesia’, Indonesia 96 (2013), 35. 33. Robison and Hadiz include ‘media control’ in their argument of oligarchy, in ‘The Political Economy of Oligarchy and the Reorganization of Power in Indonesia’, 40. See also Jeffrey Winters, “Oligarchy and Democracy in Indonesia.” (2014). In Beyond Oligarchy: Wealth, Power, and Contemporary Indonesian Politics, edited by Michelle Ford and Thomas B. Pepinsky (Cornell University Press, Ithica), pp, 25–27. 34. Winters, ‘Oligarchy and Democracy in Indonesia’, 33. 35. Ibid., 7–8. 36. Winters, Oligarchy, 180. 37. Winters, ‘Oligarchy and Democracy in Indonesia’, 24–25. 38. Robison and Hadiz, ‘The Political Economy of Oligarchy’, 40–41. 39. Vedi Hadiz, ‘Jokowi v Oligarchy’, New Mandala, 10 July 2014, accessed 21 October 2016, http://www.newmandala.org/president-jokowi-vs-oligarchy/. See also Vedi Hadiz and Richard Robison, ‘Jokowi the Trials of Navigating through Oligarchy’, Indonesia at Melbourne, accessed 21 October 2016, http://indonesiaat melbourne.unimelb.edu.au/jokowi-the-trials-of-navigating-through-oligarchy/. 40. Moses Shumow (ed.), Mediated Communities: Civic Voices, Empowerment and Media Literacy in the Digital era (Peter Lang, Portland, 2015). 41. Manuel Castells, Communication Power (Oxford University Press, 2009). 42. Jenkins, Convergence Culture, 254. 43. United Nations 2010, as cited in Chatib Basri, ‘Indonesia’s Role in the World Economy’, Indonesia Rising: The Repositioning of Asia’s Third Giant (ISEAS, Singapore, 2012), 33. 44. Ibid. In 2010, according to the World Bank, around 56.5% of the population was considered ‘middle class’, up from 37.7% in 2003. In this study $2–$4 per day is considered ‘middle class’ ($10–$100 per capita per day in purchasing power parity terms).

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45. Merlyna Lim, ‘Many Clicks but Few Sticks: Social Media Activism in Indonesia’, Journal of Contemporary Asia 43, 6 (2013), 17. 46. Avantika Chikoti, ‘Fight to Become Indonesia’s Alibaba begins’, Financial Times, 30 March 2016. 47. Freedom House, ‘Indonesia 2015’. 48. Masyitha Baziad, ‘Dorong pertumbuhan pengguna Internet, Indonesia percepat dukungan infrastruktur’, Digital News Asia, 10 September 2015, accessed 31 March 2016, https://www.digitalnewsasia.com/digital-economy/dorong-pertum buhan-pengguna-internet-indonesia-percepat-dukungan-infrastruktur. 49. Lars Willnat et al., ‘Social Media and Political Participation in Asia – First Look’, Indiana University School of Journalism, 2011, accessed 8 April 2012, http:// www.mapor.org/confdocs/absandpaps/2011/2011_slides/2c5Willnat.pdf. This proportion was higher than in China (68.3%), Japan (64.4%), Thailand (61.2%) and Taiwan (55.7%). 50. Freedom House, ‘Indonesia 2015’. 51. ‘Jakarta Ibu Kota Paling Macet di Dunia’, Tribune Jakarta, 10 August 2015, accessed 31 March 2016, http://www.tribunnews.com/metropolitan/2015/08/10/ jakarta-ibu-kota-paling-macet-di-dunia. 52. ‘Ternyata Orang Indonesia Lebih Kenal Facebook Ketimbang Internet’, Selular.id, 12 February 2015, accessed 1 March 2015, http://selular.id/news/2015/02/ ternyata-orang-indonesia-lebih-kenal-facebook-ketimbang-internet/. 53. Elisabeth Pisani, Indonesia Etc: Exploring the Improbable Nation (Granta, London, 2014), 3. 54. Indonesia supports the freedom of religion of members of only six religions: Islam, Catholicism, Protestantism, Confucianism, Buddhism and Hinduism. 55. Jewel Topsfield, ‘Jakarta Attacks: How a Handsome Cop Broke the Internet’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 19 January 2016, http://www.smh.com.au/world/why-ahandsome-cop-broke-the-internet-after-the-jakarta-terror-attacks-20160118-gm8 ks0.html. 56. ‘Cerita Tukang Sate yang Tetap Mengipas Dagangan Saat Ledakan Di Sarinah’, kompas.com, 14 January 2016, http://megapolitan.kompas.com/read/2016/ 01/14/17411361/Cerita.Tukang.Sate.yang.Tetap.Mengipas.Dagangan.Saat.Ledakan. di.Sarinah?utm_source=WP&utm_medium=box&utm_campaign=Khlwp. 57. Lim, ‘Many Clicks’, 636–657. 58. Mietzner, ‘Reinventing Asian Populism’, 8. 59. Edward Aspinall, ‘Popular Agency and Interests in Indonesia’s Democratic Transition and Consolidation’, Indonesia 96 (October 2013), 102–103. 60. See Indonesia 96 (October 2013; Special Issue: Wealth, Power, and Contemporary Indonesian Politics), quoted extensively in this article; and Michele Ford and Thomas Pepinsky (eds.), Beyond Oligarchy: Wealth, Power, and Contemporary Indonesian Politics (Ithaca, NY: Southeast Asia Program Publications, 2014). 61. Marcus Mietzner, ‘Oligarchs, Politicians, and Activists: Contesting Party Politics in Post-Suharto Indonesia’, in Ford and Pepinsky (eds.), Beyond Oligarchy, 99–116. 62. Aspinall, ‘Popular Agency’, 119. 63. Mietzner, ‘Jokowi’s Rise’, 59.



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64. See Aspinall, ‘Oligarchic Populism’. 65. Manuel Castells, Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Digital Age (Polity, Malden, 2012); Lincoln Dahlberg and Eugenia Siapera (eds.), Radical Democracy and the Internet (Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2007). 66. Andrew Keen, The Internet Is Not the Answer (Atlantic Monthly Press, New York, 2015), x; Evgeny Morozov, The Net Delusion: How Not to Liberate the World (Allen Lane, London, 2011). 67. Esteve Sanz, ‘The Television Industry’, in Guiditta de Prato, Esteve Sanz and Jean Paul Simon (eds), Digital Media Worlds: The New Economy of the Media (Palgrave Macmillan, UK, 2014).

Chapter 1

The medium and the message

Whenever a new media technology is introduced and on the verge of widespread uptake, scholars search for analysis about its immediate impact. Krishna Sen argues that ‘the media has been the site of every momentous transition in living memory’ in Indonesia.1 In examining the impact of digitalisation in shaping contemporary Indonesian politics and society, and the power structures within it, it is important to note that digital media did not arrive in Indonesia in a vacuum but as a continuation of earlier technological advancements in communications. This chapter explains how various media have shifted power structures throughout Indonesia’s history, from printed nationalist newspapers to government-controlled television and radio production, to the internet. Scholars who examine Indonesia’s media do so to advance or dispel arguments about power structures within Indonesian society. This does not mean that they believe technology per se is the reason for political transitions, but rather that the political agency of a section of Indonesian society becomes enabled by new media technologies.2 One way to understand the impact of media is to think about the ‘message’ it brings. In 1964, Canadian scholar Marshall McLuhan famously argued that the form in which people communicate – the medium itself – is the most significant aspect of any examination of the media. He argued that media studies scholarship was focused on content or discourse analysis, and missed the more important element of how the medium shapes the content. McLuhan claimed that the widespread use of any artefact, whether or not it was clearly a medium of communication, sends a ‘message’ to the whole culture by shaping human thinking, behaviour and interactions into a particular pattern.3 For decades, scholars have written many analyses of McLuhan’s approach of studying the particular characteristics or ‘types’ of media.4 McLuhan’s scholarship faced significant criticism in the 1970s, and by the 1

2

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1980s Understanding Media and many of his other books were out of print. However, the mid-1990s and the arrival of the internet saw his work revived. McLuhan’s writings ‘have come to be seen as predicting events and processes that did not occur until decades after his description of them’.5 There was even a book entitled Digital McLuhan: A Guide to the Information Millennium, as scholars looked to tackle a new era of ‘cyberspace’ and the ‘world wide web’.6 McLuhan’s most-quoted statement that ‘the medium is the message’ continues to be discussed and critiqued.7 But for all his ‘incomplete and sometimes baffling writing’,8 McLuhan brought prominence to the field of media studies and the study of ‘the medium’ itself as central to structural changes in society, politics and world affairs. In this chapter I will not seek to revisit McLuhan’s scholarship in detail but argue that thinking about how the ‘medium’ of digital encourages certain ‘messages’ is crucial to understanding the impact of digitalisation on Indonesian society. In short: if the ‘new’ medium is digital, what is the message? To answer this question, we need to understand how previous scholars of Indonesian studies have examined the consequences of ‘new’ media being introduced to the archipelago. This chapter begins with the case of print media in newly independent Indonesia, moves on to discuss television throughout the New Order period and concludes with a discussion of the arrival of the internet in the late 1990s. The early sections of this chapter sweep through contemporary Indonesian history and argue that each time a new medium enters Indonesian society, it has a profound impact on the way society works. The section titled ‘Prelude to the digital era’ introduces the arrival of digital technologies, explaining their evolution and early connection with the internet. The final section posits the argument of remaining chapters in this book surrounding the digital media paradox: despite digitalisation enabling technology to be more convergent, Indonesian society is in fact becoming more divergent. Oligarchs and netizens have both been empowered by digitalisation, but their empowerment takes Indonesia in different trajectories. NEW MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES IN INDONESIA This book is not the first to emphasise the importance of a new medium in shaping Indonesian society. Benedict Anderson’s famous analysis of how nations are ‘imagined’ was an examination of print media, in particular new, nationalist newspapers in Java.9 As he writes in Imagined Communities (1983), print capitalism allowed for the spread ‘out into the marketplace and the media’ of the national language, bahasa Indonesia, which helped build solidarity among young, elite Indonesians. The print media informed a collective understanding that there was a ‘steady, anonymous, simultaneous



The medium and the message 3

experience’ of readers, even if they ‘addressed itself primarily to the elite, urban Indonesians rather than to the masses’.10 For Anderson, the newspaper was the key medium not only because it enabled and encouraged vernacular ‘print-languages’ but also because it created an imagining of a new kind of ‘sovereign community’. In his view, newspapers acted as vehicles for revolutionary ideals, and carried optimistic messages about a new nation, of a new and exciting period, presenting common themes which highlighted the importance of a unified nation.11 Anderson’s thesis has similarities to McLuhan’s in that it emphasises the importance of the form of media, not solely the content which is produced. In McLuhan-esque terms, the key medium was ‘print’ and the message it produced was the ‘nation’. Because it reached a larger audience, radio is described as the ‘communication medium of Indonesian independence’, with particular emphasis on the importance of the medium in broadcasting new leaders Sukarno and Hatta’s Declaration of Independence on 17 August 1945.12 The government-operated Radio Republik Indonesia (RRI) came into operation only 25 days after this declaration, and RRI would continue to be an important avenue to reach citizens throughout the vast archipelago. Indonesia would become known as the ‘microphone republic’ with Sukarno, a brilliant orator, as its first president.13 Through RRI, Sukarno used radio broadcasting to deliver his message of a new nation and its founding principles. Yet radio is also described as a ‘forgotten medium’ or the ‘invisible medium’ by scholars who study it in Indonesia and elsewhere.14 So, print media was consumed predominantly by a tiny privileged elite group who were literate and able to be reached by its distribution, yet its impact is seen as profound and far-reaching in empowering a new political class. Conversely, radio reached more citizens, and correlates closely with the Indonesian oral culture of information-gathering, yet it is apparently undervalued. This distinction has important conclusions for our understanding of the impact of digital media. I will return to this point about empowered minorities later, but the key point here is to show that leading scholarship on Indonesian media has not always been based around high levels of audience consumption. Rather, it was the ‘message’ it brings to Indonesian society through its introduction. For example, the importance of print media in shaping ideas in Indonesia was further reinforced post-independence when one of the first acts of President Sukarno in implementing his autocratic ‘Guided Democracy’ rule was to ban newspapers which he determined were ‘opposition press’.15 In conclusion, medium theorists argue that new media technologies privilege certain groups and identities and weaken others, and this book continues this theme. Print media privileged the idea of educated, urban elites, while at the same time assisting in the production of a broader sovereign community who rallied around a vernacular language. This language and community

4

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was later broadcast on national radio to a larger cohort of people who now began to consider themselves ‘Indonesians’. Despite its legacy as a forgotten medium, the role of radio in spreading news of the revolution was crucial, and signalled the beginning of a scholarship examining the broadcast media as ‘mass communication’: in particular as a tool to promote national identity and build support for a dictatorial regime. Television Television, with its centralised need for capital and communications infrastructure, was a perfect medium for an authoritarian regime to justify and legitimise its rule. Indonesia’s initial sole permitted television station, Televisi Republik Indonesia (TVRI), was government-owned and controlled. It was created in 1962 in preparation for the Asian Games, and at the height of Sukarno’s ‘Guided Democracy’. TVRI quickly became a ‘prime engine of national union and unity’,16 and would communicate government policies and programs to the public, although initially this footage was received only in Jakarta and a few large provincial centres. Television contributed to the feeling of ‘nation-ness’, in extending the national economic market, and in preparing citizens as central players in the nation’s development.17 Sukarno’s government was overthrown in 1965, ushering in new president Suharto’s military regime, described as the ‘New Order’ (1965–1998). Throughout Suharto’s Indonesia, television was used expertly to legitimise and maintain the nation’s new identity as a progressive developmental state, with Suharto as the ‘Father of Development’. During the early years of the New Order, television aimed to unite the nation as a ‘mass’, all moving towards the same objective set by the government. State-owned TVRI broadcast only government messages, even without commercial advertising, because officials worried that the ‘ignorant masses’ would be too easily led.18 Television became highly popular in Indonesia as household ownership of a television set grew throughout the 1970s and 1980s. In 1971, there were only 212,580 registered television sets, and only 5% of these were registered outside of Java. By 1983 nearly three million sets were registered, reaching an estimated total of 95.5 million people, or about 64% of the population.19 By then, TVRI had 9 stations and 190 transmitters, and by 1994, it had 12 stations and 328 transmitters with a radius of 806,116 square kilometres.20 At its height in the late 1990s, TVRI owned 27 local stations, had approximately 7,000 employees and its broadcasts reached 82% of the population.21 In 1976 Indonesia became the first country in the developing world to launch a satellite, named Palapa I, at a cost of USD 73 million.22 Through satellite transmission, television allowed Indonesia’s highly centralised government to spread its message throughout the country’s 18,000 islands, and was



The medium and the message 5

‘another illustration of state authorities’ desire to control communications – this time primarily for military purposes but also for cultural and education purposes’.23 Satellite television was a ‘national teacher’, contributing to ‘integration’ of Indonesian society. Many rural villagers learnt bahasa Indonesia from watching television, while television explained national ‘values’ to a large segment of the adult rural population.24 This is not to say that other media throughout the New Order were irrelevant. Print media became more shackled in the New Order, and subject to stringent controls. When Suharto came to power in 1965, it took less than a year for his government to introduce a new Press Bill which imposed severe limitations on the print media. Publications which published dissenting voices could have their licences revoked. Forty-six of Indonesia’s (then) 163 daily papers were actually banned within days of Suharto taking power.25 For example, Indonesia’s weekly magazine Tempo faced regular threats from officials and was banned in 1994, yet often attempted to report as best as it could on the machinations of Indonesian politics.26 Jacob Oetama was chief editor of Kompas during the majority of Suharto’s New Order.27 He recalls: ‘Kompas policy was to report as much as possible, but in order to be able to report, we had to be very wise, or cautious, or cowardly’.28 Anderson would later describe Indonesia’s largest selling daily newspaper, Kompas, as ‘the New Order newspaper par excellence’.29 Yet, because the broadcast media were more easily controlled than print, dissenters and activists were more likely to come from print media. As such, the study of print media in Indonesia was mostly framed in terms of broader issues pertaining to freedom of expression under an oppressive military regime.30 From the 1980s, observers noted that the Indonesian press underwent a transformation to become heavily industrialised.31 Daniel Dhakidae has argued that Indonesian journalism under the New Order became ‘politically de-capacitated’ due to a concentration of ownership encouraged by both the state and market forces as early as 1975. He explains how media companies were all concentrated in the hands of a few members of the New Order ruling elite, who could thus control the flow of news.32 Control of the media and communication also provided the Suharto family with enormous wealth, estimated at over USD 5 billion in Time magazine in 1999, a feature of Suharto’s nepotistic and corrupt regime.33 Investors and media entrepreneurs not well connected to the regime were deliberately shut out. Dahlan Iskan, who bought the struggling Jawa Pos newspaper in 1982 when it had only 2,400 subscribers, recalls: ‘During the New Order, regulation made it impossible to expand your media business. One company was only allowed one newspaper. One newspaper cannot join another newspaper. There were 42 regulations on media business, as far as I can recall. We could not publish more than 12 pages. We cannot print in other cities’.34 Thus, Suharto restricted the impact

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of print by limiting ownership business models, and by concentration of ownership. The mass media became the most important area of maintenance and nurturing of the Suharto authoritarian regime’s legitimisation, and television was central to this process.35 Scholars increasingly stressed the importance of studying the medium of television in order to make sense of Suharto’s regime.36 The message of the New Order was one of homogeneity and ‘national unity’, and the medium of television best allowed for this controlled, state-sponsored ideal. British scholar Mark Hobart wrote that ‘from 1970 it became difficult to ignore the social consequences of television. The mass media raised ethnographic and theoretical challenges about how to analyze and understand what was happening’.37 For Hobart, it led to ideas around the exact nature of what constitutes ‘the audience’, and how scholars and elites might imagine them.38 The Indonesian media in the Suharto era ‘was to affirm an imaginary order, which vested the speaker with authority, not to inform or represent others’ thoughts and ideas, but render them passive subjects’.39 Television was advanced as the dominant medium of the New Order by the government. The content of TVRI news reports began with President Suharto, who often gave long speeches about development and national unity. The precise words of the president were not overly important. Rather, it was that it was his rightful place to be the first to convey the message of news reports, exemplifying the paternalistic nature of the New Order regime. New Order officials measured the media by ‘the degree of its contribution towards making overall national development a success’.40 The medium of television best exemplified the New Order ‘message’ of the developmental Indonesian state. Transnational satellite In the 1980s, new media technologies presented Indonesian policy-makers with a serious challenge. Segments of the Indonesian elite and middle class were able to purchase transnational satellite television, which provided an alternative to the state-owned TVRI broadcasts. As other countries began to enjoy greater diversity of television stations, Indonesia’s elite demanded similar opportunities.41 In this context, commercial television came to Indonesia, driven both by popular audience-centred dynamics and as a way to stimulate the economy through commercial advertising. Of course, there were certain rules new, privately owned Indonesian television stations were forced to abide by. Stations were chartered to promote the national interest, which included advertising. There were rules surrounding the installation and registration of satellite dishes to make sure they were



The medium and the message 7

tuned only to Indonesia’s Palapa satellite, which meant they could not receive signals of Malaysian or Thai satellite programs (although these rules were not particularly easy to enforce). Most crucially, all commercial television licences were issued to business leaders who were part of or close to the president’s family, including Suharto’s daughter Siti Hardiyanti Rukmana (known as ‘Tutut’), and son Bambang Trihatmodjo. Jeffrey Winters describes this as ‘the family phase’, where Suharto’s six children were old enough to get among the ‘action’ and as Suharto began to lay the ‘ground work for a dynastic succession’.42 As such, television remained the dominant medium for understanding the nature of the New Order regime. In October 1987, Rajawali Citra Televisi Indonesia (RCTI) became the first commercial television service in Indonesia. RCTI was under the control of Suharto’s son Bambang, through his company, the Bimantara Group, but Manado businessman Peter Sondakh was a key partner and would go on to become a central figure in the Indonesian television industry. RCTI was followed in January 1990 by Surya Citra Televisi (SCTV) under the control of Sudwikatmono, Suharto’s stepbrother. By 1993, five national commercial channels had been given a licence to operate. National broadcasters were permitted to use Palapa and terrestrial link facilities and to establish a network of stations or branches to assist them. In March 1993 RCTI and SCTV were joined by two new commercial television stations, PT Cipta Televisi Pendidikan Indonesia (TPI) and PT Cakrawala Andalas Televisi (ANTV), while a fifth, PT Indosiar Visual Mandiri, was established in 1995. Once again, owners were key Suharto family members or those close to them. Suharto’s daughter Tutut controlled TPI, while Golkar politicians Agung Laksono and brothers Nirwan and Aburizal Bakrie created ANTV. In addition, the wealthy Chinese-Indonesian businessman Anthony Salim established the television station Indosiar. Satellite transmission threatened the way in which the state controlled the mainstream media. These new channels were created largely for commercial reasons, and as a result there were occasions where commercial imperatives led to a divergence from the objectives of the New Order government. Kitley notes one example in 1990, when RCTI chose not to present a live relay of Pancasila Day (which was broadcast on TVRI), instead offering viewers a controversial Dutch-Indonesian movie Max Havelaar.43 Indonesians were enjoying the content being broadcast on these new privately owned television stations. In one 1991 survey, 28% of Indonesians considered ‘news’ as their ‘favourite program type’, second only to ‘entertainment’ (35%) and much higher than the third most popular category of ‘film’ (9%).44 Meanwhile, the number of television sets in Indonesia increased from 7.6 million in 1990 to around 20 million in 1997 (in a population of 200 million).45 Thus, the power

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of TVRI in its maintenance of the state had been nullified by the arrival of new satellite television technologies, which, although commercial, were not independent from Suharto’s family interests. This arrival of privately owned television stations marked the beginning of what was to become larger media conglomerate business groups in Indonesian broadcasting.46 Slowly, and still through very strict methods, control over television was being transferred from the government itself (as had been the case with TVRI) to elites close to them. Aburizal Bakrie described it in this way: We believed that there should not only be national television. A lot of people, most of whom were business people, wanted to make a profit out of television. We were in friendly competition. In business that is normal. We are competing against the first family, and we are friends with the first family. In business we compete with each other, but we don’t have to be enemy, even political enemy.47

But how did one ‘compete without being an enemy’? One issue in the media where this would play out was Suharto’s insistence that only TVRI could broadcast news reports. Veteran broadcaster Peter Gontha (formerly with RCTI) explained how in 1997 he managed to get around the controls of the state so that his TV station (RCTI) could broadcast news content: Being a businessman, I don’t want them to take away my license, so I just work around the restriction. For example, one day there was a movie star who died . . . I went to the house and just took pictures randomly and then went back to the studio and made a half hour programme in memoria of this movie star. But at that point in time, was it news? She passed away – it wasn’t news . . . [Then a week later] I just took a normal man on the street who died in a car accident and I made a half hour news programme about people who die in car accidents. Was it news? No. It was just about people who died. Before long we had a daily half hour news programme. Today we have four hours of news and it is the biggest income stream in RCTI. The government cannot stop us anymore. Basically what I am saying is that governments make rules. We are businessmen.48

This attitude that business could override regulation came out of a period where new businesses needed to overcome extensive regulatory challenges under an authoritarian regime, during the climate of the late 1990s which emphasised greater keterbukaan or ‘openness’. While Suharto kept television companies within his family and close confidants, it would ultimately ‘create a powerful stratum of oligarchs that ultimately became independent from him, that would step aside leaving him exposed when his regime came under attack in the late 1990s, and would go on without him to dominate the country’s politics’.49 The medium of



The medium and the message 9

television became a space for New Order business cartels to extend their reach beyond what Suharto allowed, which was part of wider political change occurring at this time. While news content was not exactly critical of the government, by 1996 news broadcasts by private stations were permitted. In reality, the commercial stations had been doing so anyway for a number of years. TVRI was slowly becoming irrelevant, and cracks began to appear in the maintenance and reproduction of Suharto’s regime. Television remained crucial for understanding Indonesian society. Indonesian media scholar Veven Wardhana, for example, argued that the New Order had conditioned Indonesians to ‘become the children of television culture’ and had ‘taken over the role of parents in educating and developing the character of children’.50 This view reflects Western literature on television in the late 1980s and 1990s. Television had helped convince many in the West that the Vietnam War was a brutal, unnecessary policy in the 1970s. By the late 1980s, leading scholars of mass communication saw television as a medium which depoliticised (described colloquially as the ‘idiot box’) and became complicit in mobilising support for state and private interests by ‘manufacturing consent’.51 As such, many scholars became staunch critics of the medium in Indonesia and elsewhere. The arrival of satellite transmission facilitated new power structures around the ownership of private television stations, which highlighted the shifting nature of the regime. But television would not be the medium which radically changed the way in which Indonesians sought broader political change. The ‘message’ of reform would be more easily distributed through an alternative medium, one which allowed for individual production of content and could therefore usurp the messages of elites or government officials. The internet The late 1990s advancements in global communication technologies saw the arrival of the internet, which, like most new media, ‘caught many national and international regulatory bodies, including the New Order government, unprepared’.52 The internet’s arrival in Asia coincided with the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, which precipitated the eventual resignation of President Suharto and the end of his regime. As Hill and Sen have shown, the internet was crucial in overcoming censorship barriers which existed in the print media, and highlighted the lack of freedom in Indonesia’s other media. While Hill and Sen are careful to explain that ‘the relation between freedom of speech on the internet and democracy at the level of parliament and the streets of Indonesia is neither obvious nor direct’,53 they do show that the internet provided a medium for the urban middle classes to express discontent with Suharto’s regime. Even if the percentage of Indonesia’s population accessing

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the internet was only small (estimated to be around 200,000 users in 1998)54, people writing online could comment on political issues, including writing about how they were being repressed by an authoritarian state. As Hill and Sen argue, ‘The technology could have been used for vastly different purposes, but in the crisis-ridden Indonesian economy, gold and platinum “corporate Net” lines advertised by the ISPs seemed far less important than the wired warnet [internet shops] and their motorcycle-riding clients who marched in the streets in the days before Suharto’s resignation’.55 Merlyna Lim argues that the internet was a ‘convivial medium’, embodied in the warnet (internet shop) as a ‘direct form of social engagement’.56 She writes that warnets ‘were crucial to the rise of civil society in a very short period before the downfall of Suharto’, not because of cyberspace itself, but rather because of the linkages between cyberspace and these physical spaces or ‘cyber nodes’.57 Again, this is not to say that other media were not crucial to this time period. Newspaper articles, radio programmes, video compact disc (VCD) recordings and even mobile phone conversations also disseminated reformist messages.58 Scholars rightly looked at other forms of communication throughout the reformasi period and its immediate aftermath, such as community radio, and the ‘diverse range of media practices’ which explicitly and implicitly assisted in the erosion of the New Order.59 But there is little doubt that the new medium of the internet was central to usurping government-sponsored modes of production, and was a vital medium in enabling ordinary Indonesians to use online platforms to assist with messages expressing the need for wider political change. As a result of Indonesia’s transition from authoritarian rule to democracy in 1998, its media landscape certainly became much freer. Janet Steele described it as moving ‘from darkness into light’.60 Internet newswire service JOYO assisted newsgatherers by collecting and disseminating news each day to other journalists via email. The service was so successful its mailing list grew from 6 in 1996 to 4,000 recipients in 1998.61 In 1999, President Habibie’s sudden change of policy supporting a referendum in East Timor led to a belief that the media should be able to operate freely from the region. The international media’s ability to use new technologies to broadcast live reports from the ensuing violence in East Timor allowed for a groundswell of support for an Australian-led military intervention in the region.62 The exception to this transformation, both in the reformasi period and today, is Indonesia’s eastern-most provinces in Papua, where the local media operates under a subnational authoritarian regime, the aim of which is to suppress an independence movement. International journalists describe reporting in Papua as similar to the way in which Indonesia’s media operated under the New Order’s military rule.63 While there have been some improvements from



The medium and the message 11

Papua’s New Order military brutality ‘darkness’ since that time, Papua’s best journalists continue to work in the shadows, unable to operate in the light of a free media environment. In conclusion, by going back through Indonesia’s media history, I have argued that ‘new media’ technologies are central to facilitating or supporting transitions within Indonesian politics and society. Benedict Anderson’s study focuses on the role of print media in promoting the message of nationalism. Scholars who examine Suharto’s authoritarian rule emphasise the importance of television and mass media as crucial to the legitimisation of his military regime. Finally, online forms of communication were central to promoting messages throughout the reformasi period, as the new medium of the internet allowed for subversive messages to circumvent state censorship. As Indonesians currently embrace new digital technologies, this chapter now turns to the ‘message’ it brings. PRELUDE TO THE DIGITAL ERA In order to examine how certain groups’ political agency is enabled by digital media, we must first understand how digitalisation arrived in Indonesia, and the historical time frame and political context by which it is utilised by media companies, governments and citizens. In this section we hear of the rise of media owners who benefitted from digitalisation and a more open media ownership environment. We also hear of the introduction of new digital media platforms which allow for greater participation from citizens within larger mainstream media structures in a more open and transparent public sphere. The fall of Suharto led to an exciting process of opening up the Indonesian media. The 1999 Press Law, seen as ‘the crown jewel of reformasi’, put an end to government licencing of publications.64 Unsurprisingly, there was an explosion of around 1,500 new print media titles between 1998 and 2002. In addition, there were more than 900 new commercial radio and television licences.65 Of course, not all produced quality journalism. Many tabloids had sensationalist content of political and sex scandals’,66 and many of these commercial radio stations played popular music. But overall, the Indonesian media market suddenly experienced enormous growth, increased diversity in players and content, an emergence of community radio, as well as the introduction of the internet into the mainstream media landscape. The immediate post-reformasi period, while chaotic politically and economically for Indonesia, was a liberating period for media owners, for press freedom activists and for ordinary Indonesians who now enjoyed a diversity of news and views. Many scholars and observers compared Indonesia’s post-reformasi media to the previous New Order period.67 If seen through this prism, the

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Indonesian media was (and still is) operating in a free market environment, where audience and readership largely determine what and how news is produced. News outlets began to publish stories of government corruption, and journalists began to overtly comment on and criticise government policies. The media could now report on certain topics which were ‘taboo’ under Suharto, such as corruption, race and religion. Indonesia would change presidents four times in six years between 1999 and 2004. Each time, the mainstream and alternative media openly and fully reported the dramatic events. Stories of corruption regularly made headlines, including cases involving Suharto’s children, stories which would have been unthinkable only a few years earlier. In the immediate years after reformasi, many Indonesians were concerned about the media’s role in promoting ‘communal harmony’. Communal violence was breaking out in pockets around the archipelago, and groups such as the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) organised protests outside newsrooms because of what they saw as overly provocative content.68 Many Indonesians in fact complained that the media was ‘too free’ in the democratic era; stories of religious violence were now covered in more lurid detail, newspapers printed pictures of dead bodies, some reports were defamatory and magazines with more sexualised content entered the market.69 The concern over a liberal media overtly played out in tensions surrounding the 2003 Anti-Pornography Law, where Islamic groups and others saw the Indonesian media as becoming influenced too much by global media forms of production.70 The communal violence in outer regions of the archipelago (e.g. in Maluku) and the Islamic group–inspired terrorist attacks that occurred in Indonesia from 2002 to 2004 saw scholars and others write about the media as central to maintaining ‘communal harmony’ in a time of considerable instability.71 In many provinces, negotiations between media groups and aggrieved citizens were moderated by a press ombudsman.72 The role of the media in stabilising and supporting Indonesia’s democracy seemed to be the most pressing issue for Indonesian scholars, politicians and NGOs. Financially, media companies were struggling in the post-reformasi period. Indonesia was still in the grips of the economic crisis, and revenues were minimal. Yearly advertising revenue in television almost halved from Rp. 2,678 billion in 1997 to Rp. 1,406 billion in 1998.73 Scholars questioned whether industrial media would continue to be the dominant paradigm of news-making, as the internet allowed for a vast array of information to be spread without the need for large amounts of capital and expensive infrastructure. In Indonesia, the arrival of online sites showed how new business models of newsgathering could emerge. Most notable was detik.com, an online news source established in 1998 by four Jakartans, including two journalists who had formerly worked for the print newspaper DeTik. The site allowed



The medium and the message 13

for short, fast ‘breaking’ news and titbits of information. If journalism is the ‘what, why, where, when and how?’, detik.com unashamedly produced content predominantly around ‘who, when and where?’, reducing context that answered the ‘why’ or the ‘how’. This was a new form of delivering news, and had the potential to compete with the larger mainstream media companies for advertising and audience share.74 In terms of content, many Indonesians hoped that the online sites born out of reformasi would regularly expose corruption and other illegal practices. Perhaps some were convinced of the invincibility of the internet, given the spirit and emotion of the time, but there was little doubt that the internet was shifting agency towards ordinary citizens and away from elite media owners connected to Suharto. However, it was not only online media that were shaping the market. A new batch of media owners of television stations were also benefitting from this period of greater openness, and they emerged as key figures in democratic Indonesia’s burgeoning media industry. Media owners emerge For many young wealthy Indonesian business people, the Asian Financial Crisis and reformasi were an opportunity rather than a curse. As financial and political powers shifted and evolved, they saw possibilities to improve their wealth and influence. Giant conglomerates faltered, a previously financially dominant state became bankrupt and weak and restrictions over media lessened. The years 1997–1998 were the start of now-prominent media empires which would shape the Indonesian media landscape for the next two decades. Rather than see a proliferation of media owners and businesses, the pre-digital era would be the start of certain media owners affirming their place in the market, in preparation for further consolidation in the years to follow. Indonesian pribumi Chairul Tanjung described being ‘unaffected’ by the Asian Financial Crisis. He used his connections with one of Indonesia’s largest conglomerate, the Salim Group, to further his business. After the fall of Suharto, the Salim Group was in great financial difficulty and assumed to be ‘finished’.75 Chairul agreed to lend Anthony Salim money from his then relatively modest Bank Mega. As a result of this relationship, many dismissed Chairul as Anthony Salim’s ‘proxy’ and therefore did not see him as particularly relevant in Indonesian politics and business,76 yet Chairul quickly became a ‘rising Indonesian businessman’77 of the post–New Order era. In fact, his Bank Mega first started making significant profits around this time. Indonesians were taking money out of banks linked to Suharto families, in particular Chinese-Indonesian-owned banks, and into smaller banks such as Chairul’s. As he wrote in his autobiography: ‘As many of these businesspeople sought to exit Indonesia, there were rich picking for all those who

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kept their eye on the ball. Large amounts of money started flowing into Bank Mega because we were one of the only banks left that could be relied upon’.78 In 1998, Chairul gained a licence for TransTV, which he established with his self-described ‘right hand man’79 former director of TPI and later director general of Radio, Television and Film at the Ministry of Information, Ishadi S.K. It was the beginning of a media empire. Another big mover in the immediate post-Suharto period was Surabaya-born Chinese-Indonesian Hary Tanoesoedibjo. Tanoesoedibjo had started a stockbroking firm in 1989 which went public in 1997, and later won assets from the Salim Group, such as the now-omnipresent convenience store Indomaret. Like Chairul Tanjung, much of the established elite underestimated Tanoesoedibjo as simply a ‘proxy’ to Anthony Salim.80 In their extensive book on the Salim Group, authors Richard Borsuk and Nancy Chng explain that Salim used Tanoesoedibjo to get access to then-president Abdurrahman Wahid, whom Tanoesoedibjo had known for some time due to their connections in East Java. Anthony Salim described Tanoesoedibjo as ‘very smart’ and that ‘you have to respect people who can build things from nowhere’.81 Tanoesoedibjo could see that the Suharto family fortune was falling apart, and acted swiftly to expand his businesses to include the mainstream media. In 1999, Tanoesoedibjo became the largest shareholder in SCTV, buying shares from Suharto’s stepbrother, Sudwikatmono. He bought TPI (later renamed MNCTV) from Suharto’s daughter Tutut, and in 2002 established another news station, GlobalTV. Around the same time he then bought RCTI (selling his stake in SCTV to Australian John Singleton). Tanoesoedibjo recalls: Buying anything was easy at that time. People didn’t anticipate buying media would be a strong choice. I knew domestic consumption would be the driver of economic growth, and consumption included the media. I did it very fast. Also in 2001 55% of advertising spending was in television so the business model was to focus on television. I was the only one at that time acquiring multiple TV stations.82

These acquisitions were the start of Tanoesoedibjo’s media empire which would only become more successful in the years ahead. This was a time of considerable financial uncertainty, but a period which also provided opportunities for new players to build media titles, platforms and empires. In addition to the business initiatives from Chairul Tanjung and Hary Tanoesoedibjo, other businessmen saw opportunities in free-to-air television stations. Golkar politician Surya Paloh, who had invested in the print media business as early as 1985 when he established Prioritas newspaper, established MetroTV, Indonesia’s first 24-hour news channel, in 2001. That same year, Jacob Oetama, owner of Kompas newspaper, bought TV-7, while



The medium and the message 15

Abdul Latief, a former minister in Suharto’s government, founded Lativi. Aburizal Bakrie held on to ANTV, and in 2002 made his son Anindya director of the company. The changes occurring within the Indonesian television industry led to the introduction of an important regulation, the 2002 Broadcasting Law. The new regulation stated that there would be no nationwide television station except TVRI, and placed various restrictions on media ownership. One owner could own two TV stations, but only 45% of a third station.83 But the laws were seen by commercial broadcasters as ‘incompatible with their centralised business models acting in an increasingly competitive market’, and were for the most part ignored. For example, Hary Tanoesoedibjo still managed to own three television stations.84 As Kitley (2003) wrote of the Indonesian Broadcasting Law of 2002: By choosing to ignore the convergence of digital technologies in their definition of broadcasting, however, an inexperienced and timid legislature risks the Law becoming obsolete in one or two years, and leaves a wide variety of the more socially accessible televisual products and services open to colonisation by market forces whose interests are more in the commodification of information rather than its civil society potential.85

As we shall see, this would turn out to be prophetic. Media companies began purchasing satellites and financed subscription-based cable companies, all the while pursuing commercial free-to-air television stations. The law was not equipped to regulate conglomeration of the industry. Yet initially, these television stations struggled to survive financially, and so were not considered to be powerful media businesses, which would greatly shape Indonesian society and politics. Chairul Tanjung was outlaying Rp. 30 billion per month for TransTV, while revenues remained miniscule in the early 2000s.86 As TransTV was due to go on air in December 2001, Chairul needed a loan of Rp. 300 billion from Bank Mandiri to stay afloat. It was not until July 2003 that TransTV began to break even.87 MetroTV also made significant losses each year. Its executives described it as being in ‘survival mode’ between 2001 and 2005.88 TV-7 and Lativi also bled significant amounts of funds in the early 2000s. ANTV (then 60% owned by the Bakrie Group) had three foreign investment banks file a bankruptcy claim in 1999, and came close to being shut down in 2002, having missed payments on its USD 128 million debt.89 Competition was intense, and advertisers were naturally cautious after the Asian Financial Crisis. As Aburizal Bakrie explains: ‘Advertisements were not strong. So for a few years, three to five years, we were losing a lot of money. At that time anyone who kept their media alive within this difficult time were only just surviving’.90 So while there were significant opportunities to invest in television companies in the late 1990s

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and early 2000s, they did not bring immediate wealth. As a result, investment in television stations was not considered crucial to becoming a wealthy and powerful oligarch in Indonesia in the early 2000s. In the print media realm, the industry was being reshaped by former Tempo journalist Dahlan Iskan. Dahlan saw opportunities as media owner not by capitalising on the restructuring of television stations in Jakarta but rather by purchasing and expanding local daily newspapers around the archipelago. Dahlan’s success in revitalising the Surabaya-based newspaper Jawa Pos in the 1980s saw his company, Jawa Pos Group, post profits of USD 2.8 million by 1998.91 Dahlan’s business model involved purchasing, building and sustaining local newspapers at low costs. Bigger companies get new equipment every few years (e.g. newsprint machines, ink, plate for press printing), and then the old equipment is sent to establish a newspaper in another province, all under the masthead of the Jawa Pos Group brand, usually Pos or Radar. Whereas other media were struggling to survive in the post-reformasi period, Jawa Pos Group nearly doubled its revenue from Rp. 156.75 billion in 1998 to Rp. 250.54 billion 2003.92 It was a highly successful business model which eventually saw the company own over 140 newspapers around the archipelago. Kompas Group, the company of Jakarta-based daily Kompas, also followed a similar business model, producing numerous local print media publications around Indonesia, usually with the masthead Tribun. The print media companies of Jawa Pos Group and Kompas Gramedia would achieve success with this business model, and become key print conglomerates in Indonesia in the mid-2000s. But like Chairul and Tanoesoedibjo, Dahlan Iskan was also underestimated as a figure of much political influence. He was initially seen as a ‘regional king’ who could possibly play a role in deciding local elections, in particular in East Java, but not a member of the Jakarta elite who would play a major role on the national stage.93 As we shall see, this belief would change in the digital era. Individual media owners quickly became key shapers of the industry in the lead-up to the advancement of digital technologies. While scholarship at the time was focused on the media as a conduit for promoting communal harmony, and in the emancipatory potential of the internet to upend traditional business models of the media, the post-reformasi period saw key figures take advantage of relaxed laws and regulations around purchasing media companies, and establish their business empires. A select group of ambitious business people were consolidating the media industry and advancing their power and influence in the early to mid-2000s. These owners would become some of the most influential players in shaping the Indonesian media in the decade to come.



The medium and the message 17

Citizenry and the arrival of the digital era While media owners became powerful players in Indonesian politics, the internet enabled new forms of participatory media to inspire individuals and groups to challenge elite messages. The importance of Indonesia’s emerging ‘internet politics’ in the late 1990s and early 2000s has been expertly covered by scholars elsewhere. As David Hill and Krishna Sen have shown, email lists, ICQ chat groups and blogs were crucial throughout the period of democratic change in the late 1990s.94 The rise of cheap, Chinese-made mobile phones in the early 2000s, in particular Blackberry, allowed more Indonesians to access participatory forms of media, initially via SMS communications and later via social media applications. It is important here to emphasise the point Hill and Sen make in 2000, that using the internet was ‘a symbolic act of resistance and an important source of contraband information’.95 It is in this context that participatory media, bolstered later by digital media platforms, arrived in the archipelago. And it is this legacy that many of the young, tech-savvy urban Indonesians who use new media platforms were trained by the internet activists of the late 1990s, such as Budi Rahardjo and Onno Purbo. These and many other doyen internet activists around the archipelago see new technologies as places for greater citizen emancipation. Purbo, for example, continues to argue for localised, citizen-run, unregistered internet service providers (ISPs), a policy which has been proclaimed illegal by the Indonesian government.96 In reviewing existing internet studies scholarship written in the first decade of the twenty-first century, authors generally construct their chapters according to various platforms, such as print, radio, television, cinema and, finally, the internet. This is true of books on the Indonesian media as it is of studies of media elsewhere in the world.97 Looking back, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, numerous scholars saw the ‘new’ media of the internet as separate from ‘old’ or ‘traditional’ media of print, radio and television. Yet as we now know, rather than overtake ‘traditional media’, what occurred was that the internet converged with ‘traditional’ platforms, and the delineation between online and print or television media became largely redundant as ‘old’ and ‘new’ media began to ‘collide’.98 Thus, unlike in previous eras, the ‘new’ medium of the start of the twentyfirst century is not singular but rather a group of new technologies which allow for the convergence of all media. Hitherto, no precise date can be easily defined as marking the entrance of the new medium of digital, although Vincent Miller offers a useful definition of digital media as: By nature a numerical representation in that all information is represented in 0–1 digital code . . . [which] can be ‘tinkered with’ in a way that is extremely

18

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difficult with traditional analogue media (as any user of photoshop is aware) and is alterable in several ways. It can be compressed and decompressed using algorithms, allowing for large amounts of data to be stored and distributed in an efficient manner. It can be easily manipulated or copied, and is transferable between different sources, objects and means of technological delivery.99

For this book, I choose the year 2004 as roughly the beginning of the ‘digital era’ in Indonesia. From 2004, social media began to expand to Indonesia, particularly US-based sites YouTube (2005), Facebook (2006), Twitter (2008) and Path (2010), which quickly made an impact on the Indonesian media landscape. The year 2004 also coincides with Indonesia voting in its first democratically elected president, the former army general–turned-politician Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. It would begin a ten-year period of democratic and economic consolidation in the country.100 Yudhoyono’s term saw Indonesia GDP growth of around 6% each year and a belief that Indonesia, with a young population and burgeoning middle class, was ‘rising’ as an economic and strategic world power.101 Under his presidency, the Indonesian media industry also began a period of ‘consolidation’. Companies making significant profits expanded and purchased other companies facing bankruptcy, leading to increased concentration of the industry, while political campaigning via participatory media platforms began to take shape throughout his presidency. Participatory media sites remain accessed by only a minority of the population. In 2015 only around 25% of Indonesians had access to the internet, lagging well behind other Southeast Asian countries – Malaysia (66%), Thailand (54%) and the Philippines (44%).102 Television still remains the medium with the most reach and popularity throughout the archipelago. Most of Indonesia’s adult population in the country watches the news on television at least once a week. Surveys show that 60% of Indonesians watched TV on a weekly basis in the late 1990s (around 26 million adults). By 2015, around 90% of Indonesians watched television (nearly 150 million adults) each week.103 When answering a survey in 2013, ‘Where do you get your news and information?’, 79% of Indonesian respondents said ‘television’, only 2% answered ‘radio’ and 8% said ‘the internet’.104 Yet as we noted in the Introduction, urban Indonesians are highly active on social media sites. Thus, there is a significant ‘digital divide’ in Indonesia. But previous scholarship on a new ‘medium’ in Indonesian society has made significant contributions, despite relatively low rates of citizenry access to this media. As Anderson’s theory of print capitalism shows, print media enabled the nationalists to promote the concept of a unified ‘Indonesia’ as a nation-state, but only an empowered minority were literate. The demand for satellite television from Jakarta’s middle to upper classes changed the dynamic of television broadcasting, moving from government-sponsored content into the hands of a few key individuals who owned private television



The medium and the message 19

stations. And while warnets may have been central to internet access, only 134,000 Indonesians had subscriptions with ISPs during reformasi. Yet, as we have seen, scholarship stresses the importance of internet technologies during this political upheaval.105 In this vein, while internet penetration continues to be mainly in and around urban areas, new digital technologies are having a profound impact on Indonesian society, but mostly by enabling an empowered minority of young, urban, middle-class Indonesians. The media have indeed been the site of momentous transitions in Indonesian history, but not all Indonesians have been empowered by new media technologies. Subsequent chapters of this book look to answer the question of what predominant ‘message’ digitalisation brings. These chapters argue that despite digital technologies encouraging convergence of media, the result for Indonesia is an increasingly divergent society. Digitalisation empowers both oligarchs and citizens, but in different ways and for different purposes. Digitalisation has led to a consolidation of players within the political economy of the media, and allows for these players to consolidate their power and influence to become media oligarchs. But digital media also empower a minority of citizens vying for influence, who are utilising new platforms and media convergence to usurp oligarchic messages and promote their own agendas. Unsurprisingly, the agendas of the two groups are rarely the same. To some extent, the ‘message’ of a digital divergent society is not unique to Indonesia or countries with low internet penetration. For example, in the wake of Donald Trump’s election in the United States, a New York Times columnist opined that ‘Silicon Valley’s luminaries woke up Wednesday morning to a darkened new global order, one that the ceaseless optimism of their tech-powered visions seemed suddenly unable to conquer’.106 In Indonesia, digital media platforms have become a key site for contestation between elites and netizens. How these groups have been empowered by digitalisation and what it means for democracy are central to understanding contemporary Indonesian society. NOTES 1. Krishna Sen, ‘Introduction: Re-Forming Media in Indonesia’s Transition to Democracy’, in Krishna Sen and David Hill (eds.), Politics and the Media in Twenty-First Century Indonesia (Routledge, London, 2011), 1. 2. Ibid., 11. 3. Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (McGraw Hill, Toronto, 1964). 4. Joshua Meyrowitz, ‘Canonic Anti-Text: Marshall McLuhan’s Understanding Media’, in E. Katz, et al. (eds.), Canonic Texts in Media Research (Polity Press, Cambridge, 2003), 191–212.

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5. Ibid., 205. 6. Paul Levinson, Digital McLuhan: A Guide to the Information Millennium (Routledge, London, 1999). 7. Todd Gitlin, Media Unlimited: How the Torrent of Images and Sounds Overwhelms Our Lives (Picador, New York, 2002), 10. ‘An image or a soundtrack is not simply a set of abstract signs that describe, point to, or represent realities standing elsewhere. Not only do they point; they are. They are wraparound presences with which we live much of our lives. McLuhan was closer to the truth when, in a playful mood, he titled on of his later books The Medium Is the Massage’. 8. Meyrowitz, ‘Canonic Anti-Text’, 211. 9. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (Verso, London, 1983). 10. Ibid., 31. 11. Adrian Vickers, A History of Modern Indonesia (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2005), 126. 12. Krishna Sen and David T. Hill, Media, Culture and Politics in Indonesia (OUP, Melbourne, 2000), 194. 13. Drew McDaniel, Broadcasting in the Malay World: Radio, Television and Video in Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore (Ablex, New Jersey), 214–215. 14. Edwin Jurriens, From Monologue to Dialogue: Radio and Reform in Indonesia (KITLV Press, Leiden, 2009), 11. 15. See Oey Hong Lee, The Press during Guided Democracy (Inter Documentation Co, Zug, Switzerland, 1971). 16. The Presidential Decree Number 215 of 1963, article 4 states that TVRI is established to serve a public function in developing the nation. 17. See Wilbut Schramm, Mass Media and National Development: The Role of Information in Developing Countries (Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1964). 18. Vickers, A History of Modern Indonesia, 174–175. 19. Godwin Chu Alfian and Wilbur Schramm, Social Impact of Satellite Television in Rural Indonesia (Asian Mass Communications and Research Centre, Singapore, 1991), 43. 20. Shelton Gunaratne and Naswil Idris, ‘Indonesia’, in Shelton Gunaratne (ed.), Handbook of the Media in Asia (Sage, London, 2000), 270. 21. Agus Sudibyo, Ekonomi Politik Media Penyiaran (Pelangi Aksara, Jakarta, 2004) 285. 22. Alfian and Schramm, Social Impact of Satellite Television in Rural Indonesia, 2. 23. Philip Kitley, ‘Citizens, Audiences and the Mediatization of the 2004 Indonesian Election’, in Krishna Sen and Terence Lee (eds.), Political Regimes and the Media in Asia (Routledge, London and New York, 2008), 208. 24. Alfian and Schramm, Social Impact of Satellite Television in Rural Indonesia, 233–235. 25. David T. Hill, The Press in New Order Indonesia (Routledge, London, 1994), 34. 26. For an excellent account of Tempo’s history, see Janet Steele’s Wars Within: The Story of Tempo, and Independent Magazine in Suharto’s Indonesia (Equinox, ISEAS, Singapore, 2005).



The medium and the message 21

27. See David Hill’s key work The Press in New Order Indonesia (Routledge, London, 1994) where he explains 46 local publications were banned and the Indonesian Journalists Association purged during the New Order period. The most extreme purges occurred with the banning of 12 publications in 1974, and Kompas and Sinar Harapan, Indonesia’s two most-read newspapers, in 1978. Furthermore, on 21 June 1994, Tempo, Editor and Detik were all banned. 28. Jacob Oetama, personal interview, Jakarta, 2006. 29. Benedict Anderson, ‘Rewinding “Back to the Future”: The Left and Constitutional Democracy’, in David Bourchier and John Legge (eds.), Democracy in Indonesia: 1950s and 1990s (Centre of Southeast Asian Studies, Monash University, Melbourne, 1994), 140. 30. In addition to some of the works previously cited earlier, see, for example, Angela Romano, Politics and the Press in Indonesia (Routledge, London, 2009). Daniel Dhakidae, ‘The State, the Rise of Capital and the Fall of Political Journalism: Political Economy of the Indonesian News Industry’, PhD thesis, unpublished. 31. Heryanto, ‘Cultural Politics of the Middles Classes in Indonesia’, 44. 32. Dhakidae, ‘The State. . .’, 324–386. 33. From Jeffrey Winters, Oligarchy (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2011), see Table 4.2, Suharto Family Cash and Assets Acquired over 30 Years in Power – from 24 May 1999 issue cover story of Time. 34. Dahlan Iskan, personal interview, Jakarta, 2015. 35. See Hill, The Press in New Order Indonesia, 34–60. 36. See Philip Kitley, Television, Nation, and Culture in Indonesia (Ohio University Press, Athens, 2000). And Mark Hobart, ‘Introduction: Why Is Entertainment Television in Indonesia Important?’, Asian Journal of Communication 16, 4 (2006), 344. 37. Mark Hobart, SOAS page, accessed 13 June 2015, http://www.soas.ac.uk/ staff/staff31118.php. 38. See Mark Hobart, ‘Entertaining Illusions: How Indonesian Elites Imagine Reality TV Affects the Masses’, Asian Journal of Communication 16, 4 (2006). 39. Mark Hobart, ‘When Is Indonesia?’, Asian Journal of Social Science (41, 2013), 524. 40. Edward Janner Sinaga, ‘Indonesia’, in Achal Mehra (ed.), Press Systems in ASEAN States (AMIC, Singapore, 1989), 39. 41. For example, in 1982 there were only about 50 television stations in the whole of Europe, mostly public-owned. By 2000 there are well over 1,000, the greater proportion delivered by satellite. Chris Forrester, The Business of Digital Television (Focal Press, New York and London, 2001), 52. 42. Winters, Oligarchy, 158. 43. Kitley, Television, Nation and Culture, 231. 44. Alfian and Schramm, Social Impact of Satellite Television in Rural Indonesia, 57. 45. Ed Hollander, Leen d’Haenens and Jo Bardoel, ‘Television Performance in Indonesia: Steering between Civil Society, State and Market’, Asian Journal of Communication 19, 1 (2009), 39–41. 46. Leen D’Haenens, Effendi Gazali and C. Verelst, ‘Indonesian Television News-Making before and after Suharto’, Gazette 61 (1999), 127–152.

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47. Aburizal Bakrie, personal interview, Jakarta, March 2015. 48. Peter Gontha, ‘Satellite Broadcasting in Asia’, in Bhimanto Suwastoyo (ed.), Broadcasting in Asia (Alliance of Journalists Indonesia, Jakarta, 1997), 42. 49. Winters, Oligarchy, 159. 50. Edwin Jurriens, ‘TV or Not TV: Spelling the Indonesian Media with Veven Sp. Wardhana’, Volkenkunde 172 (2016), 47. 51. Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (Bodley Head, London, 1988). 52. Sen and Hill, Media, Culture and Politics in Indonesia, 202. 53. Ibid., 207. 54. Gunaratne and Idris, ‘Indonesia’, 283. 55. Ibid., 211. 56. Merlyna Lim, ‘The Internet and Reform in Indonesia’, in Nick Couldry and James Curran (eds.), Contesting Media Power: Alternative Media in a Networked World (Rowman and Littlefield, London, 2003), 277–279. 57. Ibid., 280–284. 58. Edwin Jurriens, From Monologue to Dialogue: Radio and Reform in Indonesia (KITLV Press, Leiden, 2009), 11. 59. Krishna Sen, ‘Introduction’, in Krishna Sen and David T. Hill, Politics and the Media in Twenty-First Century Indonesia (Routledge, London, 2012), 2–3. 60. Janet Steele, ‘The Making of the 1999 Indonesian Press Law’, Indonesia 94 (October 2012), 2. 61. David T. Hill and Krishna Sen, The Internet in Indonesia’s New Democracy (Routledge, London, 2005), 44. 62. Ross Tapsell and Joakim Eidenfalk, ‘Australian Reporting from East Timor 1975–1999: Journalists as Agents of Change’, Australian Journal of Politics and History 59, 4 (2013), 576–592. 63. Ross Tapsell, ‘The Media and Subnational Authoritarianism in Papua’, Southeast Asia Research 23, 3 (2015), 319–334. 64. Steele, ‘The Making of the 1999 Indonesian Press Law’, 2. 65. Ignatius Haryanto, ‘Media Ownership and Its Implications for Journalists and Journalism in Indonesia’, in Sen and Hill (eds.), Politics and the Media, 105. 66. Michael Richardson, ‘Economics and Politics Curb Asian Press Freedom’, International Herald Tribune (1998), 6. 67. See, for example, Philip Kitley, ‘Civil Society and the Media in Indonesia’, in Azra and Hudson, Islam beyond Conflict: Indonesian Islam and Western Political Theory (Ashgate Publishing, Farnham, Surrey, 2008); and Janet Steele, ‘Indonesian Journalism Post-Suharto: Changing Ideals and Professional Practices’, in Krishna Sen and David Hill (eds.), Politics and the Media in Twenty-First Century Indonesia: Decade of Democracy, (Routledge, London, 2011). 68. For example Birgit Braeuchler, ‘Public Sphere and Identity Politics in the Moluccan Cyberspace’, Electronic Journal of Communication 14, 4 (2004). 69. Philip Kitley, ‘Playboy Indonesia and the Media: Commerce and the Islamic Public Sphere on Trial in Indonesia’, Southeast Asia Research 16, 1 (2008), 85–116.



The medium and the message 23

70. Ahmad Junaidi, Porno! Feminisme, Seksualitas, dan Pronografi di Media (GrasIndo, Jakarta, 2012). 71. See, for example, Steve Sharp, Journalism and Conflict in Indonesia: From Reporting Violence to Promoting Peace (Routledge, Oxon, 2013). 72. Hinca I. P. Pandjaitan, Peran Media, Ombudsman Pers & Hak Jawab untuk pelaksanaan otonomi Daerah (Indonesian Media Law and Policy Centre, Jakarta, 2006). Effendi Gazali, ‘Negotiating Public and Community Media in Post-Suharto Indonesia’, The Public 10, 1 (2003), 85–100. 73. Gunaratne and Idris, ‘Indonesia’, 289. 74. A Sapto Anggoro, Detikcom: Legenda Media Online, (Mocomedia Publishing Yogyakarta, 2012), 134. See, for example, the Press Council’s journal in 2011, ‘Era Media Online, New Media: Antara Kemerdfekaan Berekspresi dan Etika’, Jurnal Dewan Pers, Edisi 7, January 2011. 75. Christian Chua, Chinese Big Business in Indonesia: The State of Capital (Routledge, London, 2008). 76. Richard Borsuk and Nancy Chng, Liem Sioe Liong’s Salim Group: The Business Pillar of Suharto’s Indonesia (ISEAS, Singapore, 2014), 418. 77. Ibid., 474. 78. Chairul Tanjung, The Extraordinary Story of Chairul Tanjung: Indonesia’s Most Inspiring Entrepreneur (Kompas Gramedia, Jakarta), 184. 79. Ibid., 191. 80. Borsuk and Chng, Liem Sioe Liong’s Salim Group, 440. 81. Ibid. 82. Hary Tanoesoedibjo, personal interview, Jakarta, March 2016. 83. See Ade Armando, Televisi Jakarta di Atas Indonesia: Kisah Kegagalan Sistem Televisi Berjaringan di Indonesia (Bentang Pustaka, Jakarta, 2011), 178. 84. Ed Hollander, Leen d’Haenens and Jo Bardoel, ‘Television Performance in Indonesia: Steering between Civil Society, State and Market’, Asian Journal of Communication 19, 1 (2009), 39, 41. 85. Philip Kitley, ‘Civil Society in Charge? Television and the Public Sphere in Indonesia after Reformasi’, in Philip Kitley (ed.), Television, Regulation and Civil Society in Asia (RoutledgeCurzon, London, 2003), 112. 86. Chairul Tanjung, An Extraordinary Journey, 192. 87. Chairul Tanjung, An Extraordinary Journey, 192. 88. Suryapratama, personal interview, Jakarta, February 2015. 89. See ‘Next Tycoon Anindya Bakrie Assembles a Media Powerhouse in Indonesia’, Forbes, 24 July 2012, accessed 12 July 2015, available at http://www.forbes.com/sites/ forbesasia/2012/07/24/next-tycoons-anindya-bakrie-assembles-a-media-powerhousein-indonesia/. Gunaratne and Idris, ‘Indonesia’, 283. 90. Aburizal Bakrie, personal interview, Jakarta, March 2015. 91. Gunaratne and Idris, ‘Indonesia’, 296. 92. Ignatious Haryanto, G. W. Laksmini and B. Untung, kembalinya Otoritarianisme? Laporan Tahunan Aliansi Jurnalis Indpeenden 2004 (AJI, Jakarta, 2004). 93. Rachma Ida, ‘Reorganisation of Media Power in Indonesia’, in Sen and Hill (eds.) Politics and the Media, 11–16.

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94. Sen and Hill, Media, Culture and Politics in Indonesia. 95. Ibid., 200. 96. See Onno Purbo, ‘Bridging the Digital Divide’, in Ross Tapsell and Edwin Jurriens (eds.), Digital Indonesia: Challenges and Opportunities of the Digital Revolution (ISEAS, Singapore, 2017). 97. Ibid. 98. Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (New York University Press, New York and London, 2006). 99. Vincent Miller, Understanding Digital Culture (Sage, London, 2011), 15. 100. See Edward Aspinall, Marcus Mietzner and Dirk Tomsa (eds.), The Yudhoyono Years: Indonesia’s Decade of Stability and Stagnation (ISEAS, Singapore, 2015). 101. Tony Reid (ed.), Indonesia Rising (ISEAS, Singapore, 2014). 102. Statista.com figures, accessed 12 March 2016, http://www.statista.com/ statistics/281668/internet-penetration-in-southeast-asian-countries/. 103. Serikat Perusahaan Pers, Media Directory 2013–2014: Integrasi Multi Platform and Monetisasi Digital (Dewan Pers, Jakarta, 2014). 104. Lembaga Survei Indonesia, September 2014. 105. Wenny Pahlemy and Sri Aryani, ‘Indonesia’, in Indrajit Banerjee and Stephen Logan (eds.), Asian Communications Handbook 2008 (AMIC, Singapore, 2008), 226. 106. Farhad Manjoo, ‘Silicon Valley Reels after Trump Election’, New York Times (9 November 2016), accessed 1 December 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/10/ technology/trump-election-silicon-valley-reels.html?_r=0.

Chapter 2

Digital conglomerates

It is well known that the business models of the mainstream media industry have been thrown into disarray since the arrival of the internet, which has enabled widespread diversification of media content, mostly delivered for free. The arrival of the internet weakened ‘traditional’ media companies, as the fragmentation of advertising and classifieds moved online, which reduces mainstream media market dominance and ultimately slashes their revenues.1 Digitalisation, however, allows for platform convergence, which enables media companies to combine, merge, consolidate and centralise media content and businesses. Scholars have been examining platform convergence for over 30 years, especially since the late 1990s, as many television stations and newspapers launched their respective websites.2 By the mid-2000s, as convergence became a buzzword in the industry, major news companies began acquiring platforms they previously did not produce: digital television stations; online news and social media sites; citizen journalism ventures; even new daily print newspapers. They believe that in response to the fragmentation of the internet, and to survive financially in the digital era, they must swiftly morph into multi-platform companies. The process of platform convergence is occurring due to the digitalisation of media content, and because of the importance of acquiring new communications infrastructures which produce and distribute this digital content. Thus, digitalisation allows for ‘horizontal’ and ‘vertical’ mergers and acquisitions across the media industry.3 As well as buying content-creating companies such as newspapers and television stations, media companies now see the need to converge pay-TV operators, satellites, telecommunications companies, ISPs and other communications infrastructure. As a result, assessing the political economy of the media in a multi-platform, convergent media environment is not as easy as it once was. Digital technologies have also 25

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Chapter 2

allowed for a convergence of citizen journalism endeavours, social media sites, e-commerce ventures, gaming, transport and much more. This has led many in the media industry and those who study it to rightly ask: what exactly is a media company in the digital age?4 This chapter explains how digitalisation has affected the political economy of the mainstream media in Indonesia, arguing that digitalisation leads to conglomeration and concentration. In the West, media concentration has been the subject of much scholarship examining media, power and influence through the work of scholars such as Ben Bagdikian, Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman, Robert McChesney and others, who have examined the vertical integrations of media conglomerates and provided important models by which we examine media ownership, diversity and power structures.5 They all have broadly similar findings: the mainstream media are dominated by large and powerful companies. In examining market concentration, these studies address issues pertaining to media concentration, homogeneity, centralisation, diversity and freedom of the press in a country where convergent media are dominating the landscape. As Dwyer writes, convergent news ‘is an area crying out for systematic empirical research in various comparative settings’ and has ‘serious ramifications for the construction of all social and cultural diversities’.6 This chapter does so in the context of Indonesia. In Indonesian scholarship, the increasing conglomeration of Indonesia’s media industry did not feature until the second decade of the twenty-first century, and even then, studies have been minimal. Merlyna Lim’s pioneer and excellent 2011 mapping project argued that thirteen media groups controlled all of Indonesia’s national commercial television shares, owned five of the six newspapers with the highest circulation, the four most popular online news media, a majority of the major radio networks and a ‘significant portion’ of the major local television networks. ‘Over the years’, Lim warned, ‘Indonesian media went “back to business” again. Corporate interests took over and continue to dominate the current Indonesian media landscape’.7 Ignatius Haryanto observed in 2012 that the print media were increasingly in the hands of a small group of people, stating that ‘nine business groups control half the print media in Indonesia’ and that the media owners ‘look at the media as mere market’.8 Yanuar Nugroho and colleagues concluded in 2012 that ‘twelve large media groups control nearly all of Indonesia’s media channels, including broadcasting, print media and online media’, which they argue mean an industry driven by ‘capitalist interests’.9 My own research has shown that Indonesian journalists saw media ownership as a salient impediment to their autonomy, in terms of what they can and cannot report, and how they frame certain stories.10 This chapter explains the rise of ‘digital conglomerates’: national companies whose business portfolios include investments in communications



Digital conglomerates 27

infrastructure, as well as investments in television, radio, print and online media. Despite various attempts by NGOs and regulators to restrict the concentration and conglomeration, digital conglomerates now dominate the Indonesian media landscape. Big media companies continue to expand, while smaller- and medium-sized professional media organisations are either being swallowed up by larger conglomerates or are in rapid decline. The media landscape is an increasingly oligopolistic realm. Digital technologies are used to rapidly concentrate the industry, which ultimately benefits those who own and control these companies as they grasp control of the shifting mainstream media market. In the section titled ‘Indonesia’s media oligopoly’ of this chapter I identify and discuss eight key digital conglomerates in Indonesia. I spent time inside these Jakarta-based (and one Surabaya-based) media companies, interviewing executives and owners, and probing their strategies and plans for expansion. Despite eight digital conglomerates being a reasonably healthy number of media companies, I show how the business models of these companies are actually all the same. In the section titled ‘Smaller professional media dying out: threats to diversity’, I explain the consequences of this conglomeration on specialised and regional media, and argue that media diversity is hindered in the digital era. The result is a conglomeration of media news and views, which ultimately centralises power to owners of elite Jakarta-based companies. Despite the arrival of the internet and the vast and diverse option for content online, digitalisation has allowed for Indonesia’s mainstream media to remain a dominant place for elites to shape content and influence society. INDONESIA’S MEDIA OLIGOPOLY Digital technologies have meant swift and often far-reaching adaptations for almost all mainstream media companies around the world. In Indonesia, these adaptations are not rigid, but patterns of concentration have clearly emerged. Digitalisation has enabled many of Indonesia’s large media companies to build, grow and become wealthier. Meanwhile, smaller companies are either struggling to survive financially or have been bought by larger companies. The technological process of convergence described in the previous chapter favours the media companies who have significant capital to invest in a wide range of platforms. It allows them to acquire other content-based companies (or ‘horizontal’ mergers) or to invest in communications infrastructure which enables the dissemination of this content (or ‘vertical’ mergers). Digital conglomerates (see Table 2.1) thus provide both content and network. Table 2.1 shows the multi-platform nature of the contemporary media industry. Media owners and executives in Indonesia believe that in the highly

Hary Tanoesoedibyo

MNC

SCMA Group

Berita Satu Kompas Group

VisiMedia Asia Jawa Pos Group Media Televisi Indonesia

Global Media Com

EMTEK

Lippo

Kompas Gramedia

Bakrie Group Jawa Pos Group Media Group

Aburizal Bakrie Dahlan Iskan Surya Paloh

Eddy Sariaatmadja James Riady Jacob Oetama

Chairul Tanjung

Owner

Trans Corp

Media subsidiary

CT Corp

Company

Beritasatu

Suara Pembaruan Kompas

MetroTV

TVOne ANTV JawaPosTV

jpnn.co Metrotvnews.com

Jawa Pos Media Indonesia



Liputan6



SCTV Indosiar O-channel BeritaSatu Kompas Tribune news Viva

Okezone Sindonews

Koran Sindo

MNC Global RCTI*

KompasTV

Detik CNN

Online



Flagship print public-ation

TransTV Trans7 CNN

Key TV station

Fajar FM (Makassar) –

Sonora Radio & Otomotion radio –



TrijayaFM; Radio Dandut; ARH Global radio El Shinta



Flagship radio station

Fangbian Iskan Corp Media Group

Bakrie Telecom

NEXT media Bitnet Komunikasindo LinkNET First Media K-Vision

Transvision (70%); Indonusa Telemedia Indostar II satellite; Indovision

(Key comms. infrastructure)

Table 2.1.  Indonesia’s digital conglomerates – This table provides a snapshot of the multi-platform media landscape in Indonesia.11 Source: author created.



Digital conglomerates 29

uncertain future of the digital era, it is better to expand your platforms, audience and readership reach, than to remain specialised in one platform. Thus, Table 2.1 shows that each company has spent significant amount of funds to buy or create new platforms as part of their process of becoming a digital conglomerate. In fact, 2011 saw the greatest number of mergers and acquisitions in the Indonesian media industry’s history.12 However, media companies are no longer just content producers, but have network companies as well, such as pay television companies and other communications infrastructure companies listed in Table 2.1. In the year 2000 there were only two cable television operators; by 2008 there were eleven, as companies chased pay-TV subscribers to boost revenues.13 Why the rise in these operators? Because media companies saw cable TV infrastructure not only gaining revenue from individual subscribers, but also to use its high bandwidth capacity to offer an immense choice of other digital services. In doing so, they began marrying telephony with television, interactivity with other multimedia services and higher-speed internet access. All of this is made possible because of the advances in digital technologies. The companies which have emerged as market leaders in Indonesia are digital conglomerates which began as television companies, especially Chairul Tanjung’s Transcorp and Hary Tanoesoedibjo’s MNC. Indonesia’s television companies have become highly productive in the digital era. Media advertising expenditure increased from Rp. 9 trillion (USD 9.35 billion) in 2001 to Rp. 60 trillion (USD 6.2 billion) in 2010.14 Private television stations gained around 80% of this expenditure in 2004, making them the most financially viable medium, as free-to-air television was far and away the most highly consumed media.15 Around 70% of all media advertising in Indonesia now goes to television, compared with around 20% to print media.16 The greatest amount of advertising revenues flows to television because it is the most popular medium in Indonesia. Radio, despite being widespread, has waned in popularity.17 Radio consumption has steadily declined; only 23.5% of the population listened to the radio in 2011, compared to 50% in 2003.18 Independent commercial radio stations have been struggling to survive due to the increased competition from other media, including television and the internet. Purchasing analogue radio frequencies (which are limited) has become significant, estimated to be around Rp. 3 billion (USD 22,753) in 2015. As a result, radio frequencies which are sold by smaller owners often go to the highest bidder, and these are often the digital conglomerates.19 Executives admit that most of Indonesia’s largest newspapers are declining in circulation and revenues. Furthermore, the vast majority of newspaper revenues come from government advertising and advertorials (Rp. 5.3 trillion in 2015, or 73% of newspaper advertising share).20 If provincial governments

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in Indonesia stopped advertising in local newspapers, the majority of these newspapers would likely collapse.21 The sections to follow provide details of how Indonesia’s largest media companies have undergone vertical and horizontal mergers and acquisitions, and how their dominance has grown in the past ten years. In this chapter we look at only the media business companies, while the following chapter outlines the political fortunes of their owners and how these media businesses are crucial to their political operations. Of course, business and politics in Indonesia are intertwined, but in this chapter the focus is the media business landscape in the digital era. Chapter two has detailed the origins of some of these companies. In this section we hear how media companies have expanded to become digital conglomerates. I explain the growth of these companies in three ways: a short summary of its initial expansion, its process to become a digital conglomerate and its future business growth and direction. New digital technologies have favoured companies which already possess significant capital and a large market share. It does not allow for a diverse array of profitable new companies to become financially viable through new platforms. From television to digital conglomerates This section charts the transformation of Indonesian television stations into powerful digital conglomerates. Digital conglomerates which began as television stations have access to significant capital, and thus owners of television stations have been able to quickly invest in media platforms they did not previously own prior to the digital era. Trans Corporation (Chairul Tanjung) In 2006, after achieving significant success with the popularity of TransTV, Chairul Tanjung purchased 55% shares of free-to-air station TV-7, after what he described as ‘a marathon series of discussions and negotiations’22 with its previous owner, Kompas. Chairul claimed that upon its purchase, TV-7 needed an additional Rp. 15 billion per month above what he had expected, in order to cover costs of production. TV-7 was renamed Trans7, a station predominantly for young people, in terms of both employees and audience. The strategy worked. By mid-2007, Trans7 was making a profit, and actually became more profitable than TransTV. Having two television stations allowed Chairul to be an early initiator of the convergent newsroom model. Trans merged the news centres of TransTV and Trans7 in 2008, which as Chairul described: ‘not only involved the physical provision of additional space, but also the harmonization of operating and marketing systems’.23 By bundling of Trans7 and TransTV content, the company increased its revenue immediately.24



Digital conglomerates 31

Chairul was known for his bold moves in the industry, and when he decided to turn Trans Corp into a digital conglomerate, he did so in spectacular style. In 2011, he purchased detik.com, reportedly for USD 60 million (although the precise figure was never disclosed), which made waves across the industry.25 Trans also invested heavily in communications infrastructure. In 2012 it bought Telkomvision, a cable network, and renamed it Transvision. Ishadi SK, considered Chairul Tanjung’s second-in-command within Trans Corp media companies, described the companies’ operations in this way: Chairul understands that the era of traditional media is over. The future is now with online and PayTV. The idea is for cable subscription of around 20–30 dollars [USD] a month which gives access to over 100 channels including new digital TV stations and online TV stations. Even if you only have 2 million subscribers, that’s still good, but if you can have 50 million subscribers in Indonesia, imagine the profits!26

Trans Corp initiated a partnership with US-company CNN, which also has ventures in other emerging markets such as Chile, India and Turkey, forming ‘CNN Indonesia’ in 2013. CNN Indonesia began as an online news site employing around 50 journalists, but it soon created a digital television station for 24-hour news in 2015. It broadcasts around 70–80% locally produced content, while the remaining 20–30% is translated into Indonesian language from CNN’s worldwide newsgathering system. In 2016, Trans announced a partnership with CNBC to create a business and financial television and digital news service.27 Trans Corp’s future model is based around the importance of detik.com as the most popular site for Indonesians who conduct a range of activities online. Ishadi explained the strategy in this way: ‘We want to make detik.com the future highway of all business. Every business will go through there. They will all advertise on detik, do business through detik, find details on products or applications. Detik will be not only a news portal, but a business portal’.28 In addition to centralising business direction around detik, Trans Corp plans to build a 200-hectare facility in Jakarta which includes 50 television studios. It will build a centralised newsgathering precinct for all Trans media companies. The site will include a night safari, a theme park, an ocean park, a 5,000-room hotel and a performing arts centre.29 There is little doubt that Trans Corp is a powerful force in Indonesia’s digital media landscape, and in many ways shapes the direction of the industry. Global Mediacom (Hary Tanoesoedibjo) As explained in chapter two, the success of Hary Tanoesoedibjo came in the post-reformasi period, when he invested in the media businesses and built consortiums with Astra International, George Soros and the Singapore Investment

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Corporation. In the early 2000s, Tanoesoedibjo acquired three television stations – MNCTV, RCTI and GlobalTV. Thus, like Chairul Tanjung, Tanoesoedibjo’s media empire began with owning multiple television stations. Since the mid-2000s, Tanoesoedibjo has built MNC Group to be a leading digital conglomerate. The company has a radio network of 34 local radio stations, which it started acquiring in 2005, and owns the newspaper Sindo News and the online site Okezone. Tanoesoedibjo described radio and online as ‘more strategic options’, rather than financial successes. For example, in 2014 advertisements boosted revenues in Tanoesoedibjo’s major television stations, but revenues from print media advertisements shrank by 23.6%.30 Tanoesoedibjo’s company Global Mediacom describes itself as ‘the largest and the only integrated media, broadcasting, entertainment and telecommunication group in Indonesia’.31 After the establishment of MNC Infrastructure Utama, Global Mediacom’s share price rose by 120% in a 12-month period throughout 2011–2012, and in mid-2013 was trading at Rp. 2,500 per share.32 MNC owns a satellite, bought in 2010, which has a 160-channel capacity.33 MNC Group has 19 pay-TV channels, 46 local television stations and 2.6 million subscriptions through their cable television market with IndoVision, TopTV and OKVision. Tanoesoedibjo stated he would not rent out channels of his satellite to competitors, no matter how small, because: ‘We don’t want to rent out the other channels because it is competition. Why would we rent them out?’34 In response, some rival television stations were unable to be viewed on Tanoesoedibjo’s pay-TV operators (which led other operators to stop showing some of Global Mediacom’s stations). The company continues to expand. In 2013, it purchased the JC-Deco billboard company and partnered with Chinese-owned WeChat, an online messenger service. In 2014, it included e-commerce site MNC shop and gaming site joymen.com. In 2015 Tanoesoedibjo unabashedly claimed: ‘I consolidate the industry. We are the role model of everyone. We started early, everyone else follows’.35 Despite these new initiatives within the MNC digital conglomerate, it is free-to-air television where Tanoesoedibjo continues to dominate. In 2015 he launched a 24-hour news station, I-News, which was created after MNC group spent USD 250 million on a 40-studio facility in Central Jakarta, where all news from the archipelago will be funnelled and redistributed throughout the various MNC news services. With its own satellite launched in 2009, Global Mediacom remains a leading digital conglomerate in Indonesia. Emtek (Eddy Sariaatmadja) In 2004, brothers Eddy and Fofo Sariaatmadja bought the Suharto family–owned SCTV, although Suharto’s daughter Titiek and his grandson Dandy Rukmana remained members of the SCTV board.36 Emtek has developed a successful conglomerate of free-to-air-television, online and



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‘outdoor’ (e.g. billboards) media. Its share price grew from Rp. 690 in January 2011 to over Rp. 3,000 in December 2015.37 In 2014, it made a net profit of Rp. 1.1 trillion, a 13% increase from 2013.38 SCTV analogue television stations are often the most viewed, broadcasting an array of entertainment and Sinetron programs along with Indonesia’s most watched nightly news show, Liputan 6, with around 20% of viewers tuning in at its timeslot. The Sariaatmadjas have three television stations: SCTV, Indosiar and O-Channel (Jakarta-only). The 2011 purchase of Indosiar was crucial for the company to compete with Global Mediacom and Trans, who already had multiple television stations. Eddy Sariaatmadja told Forbes in 2011 that the Rp. 1.6 trillion deal was because ‘if we didn’t do it, maybe we would have been finished’.39 Much like their competitors, Emtek has been merging news operations within its businesses to mould into a digital conglomerate.40 For example, in 2015, Emtek restructured its media division, establishing a content holding company, PT Indonesia Entertainment Group. A large part of this approach is to make content production more streamlined. For example, in regional news, SCTV and Indosiar no longer have different reporters in some cities. Rather, their model now is to have more than 100 contributors or stringers from whom they purchase stories. While Emtek has made its fortunes through analogue television, the company has delved into online news media, creating liputan6.com. Like most digital conglomerates, Emtek is linking other online sites with their business model, as part of the company KMK online. Liputan6.com chief Manuel Irwanputera said: ‘There are other reasons for people to visit the internet [beyond news]. We need to create lifestyle, travel, a portal that people go to for jobs and houses, and e-commerce. We want to introduce e-commerce and e-ticketing company’.41 Adi Sariaatmadja, Eddy’s second son, is head of Digital & Technology in Emtek. He says: Mobile streaming will be the future. PayTV will get usurped by online streaming of television. All will eventually converge to one device – the smartphone. Payment, television, e-commerce, retail models will shift to online . . . So it will take time, but so does any industry. Put it this way, if you were going to invest in palm oil, first you have to harvest.42

Emtek launched NEXT media in 2011, a digital pay-TV service, and have corporate internet access providers, mobile and telecommunications infrastructure companies and ISP businesses. They will remain a well-entrenched conglomerate in Indonesia for some time. Visi media Asia (Bakrie family) The Bakrie family’s media companies, like their other investments, have endured both highs and lows in the past ten years. In 2007 the Bakrie family

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bought the debt-ridden Lativi television station, which they later turned into a 24-hour news channel (TVOne). In addition to ANTV and TVOne, in 2008 the group purchased ArekTV in Surabaya, and the newspaper Surabaya Post. The media company is nominally under the control of Aburizal’s son, Anindya, although Nirwan (Aburizal’s businessman-brother) is the key figure in its overarching operations. Anindya was also involved in the group’s communications infrastructure investments, in particular the Bakrie Telecom company. In order to become a digital conglomerate, in 2011, the Bakrie family teamed up with another young entrepreneur, Erick Thohir, to converge TVOne, ANTV and new online news portal viva.co.id under one company, Visi Media Asia (the Bakrie Group owns 76% of the company). Visi Media Asia includes a telecommunications company and an ISP.43 Bakrie Telecom data service allowed customers to access content from media outlets such as Viva, which can cross-market and share content as well – ‘If you missed a goal on a match when broadcast, you could still watch it on Vivanews’, Anindya told Forbes in 2012.44 But Bakrie Telecom failed to raise the money it needed, and became embroiled in numerous legal battles over repayments to its creditors.45 Another failure within the Bakrie Group was the Bloomberg Indonesia initiative, a pay-TV Indonesian-language business channel. Only around 20% of Bloomberg content was produced in Indonesia, meaning much of the content was in English with Indonesian subtitles.46 By 2015, they abandoned the partnership. There is much speculation about the future of the Bakrie media empire. On the one hand, ANTV remains a strong competitor in the free-to-air television market, while TVOne consistently outranks its main competitor, MetroTV news, for audience share in the 24-hour news space. TVOne’s audience share usually hovers around 8%, compared with MetroTV at 4%. On the other hand, post the 2014 presidential election year, it was clear that Bakrie’s media companies were being trimmed down. For example, ANTV was told that 75% of its programs should be ‘in-house production’, such as talk shows, for better cost efficiency.47 Bakrie floated the idea of selling ANTV to pay off other debts, and both Tanoesoedibjo and Chairul Tanjung were in discussions throughout 2013 and 2014, but no deal was struck.48 Aburizal said in 2015: ‘Whether it was true or just Anin’s gimmick I don’t know. He turned them down. Anin believes that he can make more money [in media]’.49 By 2016, the Bakrie family told shareholders they intended to sell 15% of its stock in a subsidiary group which runs ANTV, in order to pay off other debts. Aburizal Bakrie declared his media companies ‘the most profitable industry for the Bakrie company by far’, saying his family’s company was morphing ‘first [as] manufacturing, to estates and property, after that



Digital conglomerates 35

mining, now media’.50 Indeed, Visi News Asia gross income in 2015 was Rp. 2.1 trillion, and its shares stand at Rp. 268, far higher than other companies within the Bakrie group, which are haemorrhaging funds.51 When asked by Tempo which business the Bakrie Group was relying in the future, Anin pointed to media, arguing that his companies ANTV, TVOne and Viva news had grown nearly 20% annually over the past five years.52 These statements give an indication of the importance the family places on the communications industry as part of their business portfolios, and, despite their troubles, Visi Media Asia remains a prominent digital conglomerate in Indonesia. Media Group (Surya Paloh) Surya Paloh began his media empire by investing in around a dozen newspapers in 1988–1990,53 including Media Indonesia (1988). However, it is his television station MetroTV – Indonesia’s first privately owned 24-hour news station founded in 2001 – which has been the flagship of his media empire. Thus, while his Media Group began as print, it is television that had been the key driver of Surya’s success, even if it generates only a small amount of audience share (around 2–4%). MetroTV posted a profit of Rp. 920 billion in 2014, which was still small compared to the large television stations owned by Hary Tanoesoedibjo and Chairul Tanjung.54 As media companies moved their content online in the 2000s, Media Indonesia Corp operated both metrotv.com and mediaindonesia.com. After much discussion, it merged them in 2012 because, in the words of Chief Editor Suryapratama, ‘it was rather crazy to have two online news sites from the same group’.55 But competing with the well-established detik.com and kompas.com became too difficult, and executives sought to turn Metrotvnews. com into a predominantly video news portal. This was part of the broader business plan to include online, international news, English-language and Mandarin-language content, as well as developing business and economy news portals. Media Indonesia Corp’s business model focuses predominantly on news, so could be considered more of a ‘niche market’ digital conglomerate, and has relied on funds injected from Surya Paloh’s other businesses which include hotels, mining and catering companies. Much like Bakrie’s TVOne, MetroTV has relied on its reputation as a leading news outlet that can improve political fortunes and even turn elections, rather than as a profitable business. Suryapratama said the company’s switch to digital television has not been easy, in particular to expand MetroTV’s reach throughout the archipelago: ‘We have to buy the digital apparatus such as the towers. Enormous amounts have already been spent. All over Java there is one tower for analogue and one tower for digital’.56

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The problem for Media Indonesia Corp is that they rely on MetroTV as their flagship news site, but other digital conglomerates are now creating their own 24-hour news sites, such as Tanoesoedibjo’s I-News, Chairul Tanjung’s CNN Indonesia and the Riady family’s BeritaSatu (see below). Nevertheless, given its growing communications infrastructure, its multi-platform content delivery and its vision to expand to multiple-languages, Media Indonesia Corp is forging ahead in its plans to compete as a powerful digital conglomerate in Indonesia. From print to digital conglomerate Indonesia’s print media companies, seeing this trend of multi-platform news, have also scrambled to purchase or create other broadcast-based platforms and communications infrastructure. But with less capital behind them, obtaining financial success from these new ventures has been difficult. Here I explain the growth of these companies which began as print media outlets in similar fashion to the previous section: a short summary of its initial expansion, its process to become a digital conglomerate and its future business growth and direction. BeritaSatu (James Riady) Long regarded as one of the most prominent Chinese-Indonesian family businesses in Indonesia, the Riady family’s media empire began only in the mid-2000s.57 Riady’s company Lippo Group established Globe Asia magazine, Investor Daily, and in 2006, it bought the Indonesian-language daily newspaper Suara Pembaruan. In 2008, it set up its own glossy English-language daily newspaper The Jakarta Globe with much fanfare, employing numerous well-paid foreigners and hiring a number of Jakarta Post journalists on higher salaries. At the time, James Riady was said to have ambitions to become ‘the Rupert Murdoch of Southeast Asia’.58 James’ son John was appointed the company’s digital media editor. The Riadys knew a larger multi-platform model was essential to the survival of the business. In 2011, John Riady said: ‘There is decreasing circulation of newspapers in Indonesia. The future of newspapers is as bleak as it is in the US or Australia. Indonesia is just slow to react, and soon it will be all online and very different’.59 The print media arm of Globe Asia became integrated into a larger digital conglomerate, BeritaSatu Media Holdings, which included an Indonesian and English television news station, and an online news platform. BeritaSatu has made significant strides in the digital arena for news in a short period of time. CEO Sachin Gopalan, who described himself as a ‘digital entrepreneur’, said in 2015: ‘You can compare [Berita



Digital conglomerates 37

Satu] to CNN.com and BBC.com. They kind of parallel what we are doing’.60 BeritaSatu has a pay-TV company (BigTV) and an ISP (BOLT4G). Their company LinkNet, through a collaboration with First Media, bundles internet connection with pay-TV, and passed more than 1.3 million homes as of June 2014. In Gopalan’s view, the key is that BeritaSatu is a media company which is ‘across all infrastructure’.61 BeritaSatu’s business strategy seems to be the most malleable of all digital conglomerates. By late 2015, after failing to defeat the Jakarta Post in the print media English-language market, the Jakarta Globe had stopped its print edition, and was now operating as an English-language online news service within the larger BeritaSatu Holdings newsroom. As Gopalan said, ‘No one really knows what they are doing but they know you’ve got to be in everything, so if one platform drops out or becomes unsustainable you have other options. The safest way is to be in all parts of the industry’.62 By 2016 Gopalan had left the company, and LinkNet was up for sale.63 John Riady was saying in early 2015 that there is ‘no money to be made in media’64 and was now spending his energies on the e-commerce company MatahariMall, having used USD 500 million of Lippo Group money to get this off the ground. BeritaSatu was now under the control of his younger brother, Henry. Like other digital conglomerates, the convergence of online shopping, news portals and other online ventures will be the key in determining whether BeritaSatu achieves financial success, but by 2016 almost all of the key journalists and editors who had signed up with Globe Asia in 2008 were long gone, and most had left disappointed. Jawa Pos (Dahlan Iskan) As explained in the previous chapter, Jawa Pos Group built a formidable print media conglomerate, which resulted in the company creating around 140 local newspapers across Indonesia by the early 2010s. Jawa Pos newspaper is the dominant print publication in East Java, led largely by Dahlan’s son, Azrul Ananda, since Dahlan left for Jakarta in 2006. Jawa Pos Group’s only notable failure was Jakarta-based newspaper Indo Pos, which could not compete with Kompas and other established dailies in the capital. The company has built up to be a formidable conglomerate because of its regional focus. As Dahlan Iskan says, ‘we build small capital, local stations. It was slow but steady’.65 In seeing the changes brought about by digitalisation, Jawa Pos Group became a multi-platform conglomerate forming Jawa Pos News Network (JPNN). It began to expand to television and radio as early as 2002, and by 2009 it owned 15 local television stations.66 By 2014 this number had grown to 22, under a new holding company, the Jawa Pos Media Corporation, which

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included local media corporations in several provinces, such as Fajar Media group based in Makassar.67 Dahlan Iskan has invested in power plants in Kalimantan and East Java, and in 2008 created the company Fangbian Iskan Corporindo, which saw telecommunications as ‘the business of the future’ and crucial to supporting the media content produced by Jawa Pos Group.68 In 2009 the company won a contract to build the ‘intra-Asian Submarine Cable Asia Network’ which ‘empowers the Indonesian people to connect with the global community and further enhance its adoption [of] digital communications’.69 The declining circulation and advertising revenue for print media in Indonesia means Jawa Pos Group has an uncertain future. Dahlan Iskan says: ‘Newspapers will live for a while longer, but I predict one newspaper per city in the future’.70 To what extent JPNN can compete with others and become a leading news conglomerate remains to be seen, but for now many of their newspapers in the provinces rely heavily on advertising revenues from local governments, and on circulation in areas where internet penetration is low. Should these two factors change, Jawa Pos Group would not be able to rely on revenues from its smaller television or radio stations. Kompas Gramedia (Jacob Oetama) Indonesia’s oldest newspaper, Kompas, has a long-established partnership with its publishing arm, Gramedia, which dominates the book publishing market in Indonesia. Like Jawa Pos Group, Kompas Group was successful in establishing daily regional newspapers, usually with the masthead Tribune. Its online news site, kompas.com, has around 450 journalists in 2015 and is second in the market behind detik.com. Despite selling the majority of its shares in TV-7 to Chairul Tanjung in 2007, Kompas Group established its own television station, KompasTV, in 2008. In 2011, an executive of Kompas TV argued that becoming a multi-platform conglomerate was essential because ‘we will be left behind because the circulation of Kompas newspaper is decreasing. People are now more into online and audio-visual media. Ready or not, we have to take that challenge’.71 Communications infrastructure is central to a digital conglomerate. This became clear to Kompas when some pay-TV companies owned by certain digital conglomerates refused to allow their competitors to broadcast KompasTV in 2014. As a result, Kompas Group created its own pay-TV provider, K-Vision. The group was so desperate for viewers that K-Vision offered a deal whereby even if they only paid for one month subscription, they could still watch KompasTV after the month expired through the K-Vision set-top box. K-Vision has not been a successful venture and has been outplayed in



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the market by its digital conglomerate competitions. KompasTV and kompas. com have merged; in 2016 a new office was being built which will see the creation of a multi-platform newsroom. In terms of future direction, the main media revenues of the Kompas Group are the daily newspaper, with a circulation of around 500,000 in 2014.72 Because of the long-established culture of print journalism, Kompas journalists and editors have been reluctant to merge their operations with the television and online arms of the company. As a result, Kompas daily newspaper operations are quite disconnected from other platforms, perhaps more so than any other conglomerate. The predicament faced by Kompas, Jawa Pos and (to a lesser extent) BeritaSatu is that they all began as media companies in the print media market. This market is declining, and they face stern challenges in the digital era to move their operations online and to become a larger multi-platform conglomerate. While new, online ventures bring in little revenues, television advertising remains strong and so the digital conglomerates with major television stations have had this revenue to expand their business portfolios. It is also true that in some cases the entire media company makes minimal profits and are supplemented by funds from their owner’s non-media businesses. An oligopolistic landscape In the digital era, companies believe they need to have a multi-platform portfolio because it allows for cross-promotional initiatives from one platform to another, and enables them to woo advertisers more easily than those with only one platform in the media market. This strategy is not necessarily new. Before digitalisation, this was described as ‘synergising’ advertising content.73 But the fragmentation of the internet has heightened the importance of cross-promotional strategies to be at the forefront of any advertising sell. As we have heard, most digital conglomerates are steadily adopting a model where people will connect their news sites to other sites people visit on the internet. This can include gaming, travel, event management, housing, jobs and, crucially, e-commerce ventures, described by media executives as expanding the company’s ‘digital reach’. Digitalisation is enabling multi-platform media operations to also invest in network provider companies. As a result, large media companies are becoming even larger. The eight digital conglomerates described here – Trans, SCMA (Emtek), Media Group, Visi Media Asia, Global Mediacom, BeritaSatu, Kompas Gramedia and Jawa Pos Group – can all be considered multi-platform in nature and have at least some investment in communications infrastructure. As the previous chapter explained, a number of scholars

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of Indonesian media began to examine the increasingly concentrated Indonesian media landscape around 2010. In 2011 Merlyna Lim argued that twelve large companies dominate the market; In 2012 Ignatius Haryanto claimed there were nine. While there are some differences in the business models of the companies and that each company has varying degrees of financial success, I have argued that are now eight large players in the Indonesian mainstream media scene. Thus, there has been further conglomeration of the Indonesian media industry, and the result is an oligopolistic mainstream media market. This leads us to ask a question often discussed in media political economy circles: precisely how few is too few?74 Is eight digital conglomerates not a reasonable amount of diversity? Compared to other countries around the world, and particularly in comparison to Southeast Asia where governments control much of the media, is eight independent, market-driven media conglomerates not a perfectly reasonable amount of consumer choice? Obviously, in a free market society there is nothing inherently problematic about companies growing their businesses. Indeed, media executives interviewed for this book argue that a financially secure media business produces better-quality content. However, scholars of political economy of the media are concerned concentration may limit diversity of content. They argue that media companies seek monopolistic control over scarce resources such as transmission networks, and by restricting access, they can control or restrict the provision of other media products or services, even in markets that otherwise might be competitive.75 Concentration has clearly led to digital conglomerates achieving market dominance, which leads to an oligopolistic media landscape. SMALLER PROFESSIONAL MEDIA DYING OUT: THREATS TO DIVERSITY In summarising where the industry is heading, chief editor of The Jakarta Post Meidyatama Suryodiningrat wrote in 2012: ‘The long-term outlook for the sector is for smaller, independent media companies to be acquired by larger groups, while few new players enter the business. While niche independent parties can pop up in the electoral landscape every five years or so, the smaller independent press is dying, as firms are amalgamated in giant corporations’.76 By 2016, this predicted outlook has seemingly come true. Smaller professional mainstream media companies (including media which have not attempted to become multi-platform operations)77 are shrinking or becoming defunct. For many media companies, the only way to survive in the digital era is to become part of a large digital conglomerate. I define ‘small-’ and ‘medium-’ sized mainstream media as companies which hire over 30



Digital conglomerates 41

professional journalists, but which have not yet become a multi-platform company and invested in communications infrastructure. Specialised media At a glance, Indonesia has a bountiful print and radio landscape. Data from 2014 show there were around 1,178 radio stations and 634 daily print news media.78 However, of these 1,178 radio stations, 774 were commercial stations mostly devoted to playing music. The number of these commercial radio stations declined from 845 in 2008 to 774 in 2014.79 The situation is similar for print media. The overall number of print media has decreased since 2011.80 Surveying the figures from 2011 to 2013, the biggest drop in numbers and circulation is in the group of Jakarta tabloids. In 2011 there were 73 daily tabloids in Jakarta with a circulation of about 5 million; by 2013 there were 56 with a circulation of 3.65 million.81 As is usually the case in major cities elsewhere in the world, when internet penetration rises, print media circulation declines. As their revenues and circulation are reduced, much of Indonesia’s print media have been forced to sell to digital conglomerates. Some examples provided earlier included Suara Pembaruan (Riady Group) and the Surabaya Post (Bakrie Group). Many independent regional newspapers were also sold. Some other newspapers have been forced to close, for example, one of Indonesia’s oldest dailies, Jakarta-based Sinar Harapan, established in 1961. Sinar Harapan did not join a digital conglomerate, nor did it have the capital to become one. Its founder, Aristides Katoppo, explains: ‘A newspaper now, by itself, is insufficient and inadequate. You have to have electronic and digital media as well’.82 Katoppo explains that he was approached by some wealthy businessmen but that ‘A lot of financiers believed in a certain kind of journalism which is not what I support. I could not guarantee the delivery of quality that I believe in’.83 Sinar Harapan closed down on 1 January 2016. Tempo, a weekly newsmagazine, is Indonesia’s best example of quality investigative journalism and, as such, is regarded as the country’s most respected print media. Like Kompas Gramedia, Tempo Group has also expanded to become a multi-platform operation. Tempo started Koran Tempo in 2001, a daily Indonesian-language newspaper, which has regularly bled funds. The group had started tempointeraktiv.com in 1995, which began illegally by Tempo journalists when the weekly was banned by Suharto.84 Instead, the site was reformed as tempo.co, and, rather than being a beacon of quality journalism, Tempo.co became similar to every other online news site based in Jakarta, producing details on the ‘what’ and ‘when’ but not much depth to cover the ‘why’ and ‘how’. It too struggles to make money, and so like other multi-platform entities the online media and daily newspaper is

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subsidised by more profitable media, in Tempo’s case the weekly magazine. In 2006, Tempo Group ambitiously established TempoTV through a partnership with Radio68H owner Tosca Santoso. But Tempo did not have the funds to keep the operation going. In 2012, Tempo Executive Toriq Hadad said: We can’t let Tempo be history, and Tempo stands alone as independent media organisation for all platforms. We need to get investors on board who have the same vision of independence, because we need a voice for independence, especially in Indonesian TV. We have made proposals to investors explaining why [TempoTV] will make a ‘better Indonesia’.85

The plan did not work, and other problems within digital television licencing (explained later in this chapter) meant Tempo had no choice but to abandon its regular TV operation and produce only specialist online video content with only seven journalists and eight editors. In late 2015, Tempo had built a new multi-platform newsroom in Palmerah, modelling it on those of many other digital conglomerates where news is funnelled into a ‘one newsroom’ structure. However, the difficulty for Tempo is that despite their best attempts to become a multi-platform content-provider, alternative platform ventures such as television and online have so far failed to bring in significant revenues. Furthermore, the group is minimally involved in the communications infrastructure race, which, as we have seen, is a crucial feature of a digital conglomerate. Tempo’s shares were worth Rp. 81 in January 2011 and, after some growth in 2012 and 2013, were down to Rp. 68 in December 2015. This is not to say Tempo Group has no future in the digital era, but executives within Tempo are concerned that digitalisation has benefitted the larger media companies with wealthy owners, rather than a majority shareholder–owned media company86 which specialises in quality print journalism. One way to increase revenue is to sell to a wealthy businessman. A prominent example is the Jakarta-based Islamic daily newspaper Republika, established in 1993 with the support of the New Order government to give a voice to Islamic viewpoints in Indonesia.87 According to Chief Editor Nasihin, who worked as a journalist in the early days of Republika’s establishment, ‘We wanted to be different from the other media. At the time Indonesia’s gini coefficient was bad. We wanted to see better distribution of economic wealth, more prosperity for the people, and we wanted to see this money not only go to the elites’.88 In 2001 Republika was bought by Indonesian millionaire businessman Erick Thohir.89 Thohir later acquired the Chinese-language Harian Sin Chew Indonesia and other lifestyle and sports magazines, and started his own media company, the Mahaka Group.90 Thohir’s entrance into the Indonesian media market also shows the complexities of media ownership.



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Besides Republika and newspapers in Chinese language, Thohir owns numerous magazines as well as JakTV, a local Jakarta-based TV station that he part-owns with New Order tycoon Tomy Winata. Earlier, we noted how he became part-owner of the Bakrie group’s VisiNews Asia, linking his media portfolio with a digital conglomerate. Republika is a medium-sized news company merging with a larger media company (Thohir’s Mahaka Group) whose business interests are linked with a digital conglomerate (Bakrie’s VisiNews Asia) and other tycoons (e.g. Tomy Winata). Republika’s predicament is a clear example of the challenges faced by smaller media organisations in the digital era. Thohir said in 2009: ‘In the beginning, when I took over Republika, people questioned me’.91 Many Islamists viewed Thohir as the epitome of what the Indonesian Islamic media are fighting: a capitalist, secular, cosmopolitan (he would later purchase one of the world’s most famous football team, Inter-Milan) media mogul. Despite the criticism, Thohir’s business connections have seen Republika survive the digital era. According to Chief Editor Nasihin, ‘Our circulation has remained the same but the revenue from advertising rose enormously once Erick became the owner. This is because he has connections in business. He is a businessman. He has clients. He is good at marketing’.92 Republika has moved to create a cable television station, Alif TV through Transvision, it has developed ROL (Republika On-line) and has video content through a YouTube channel. Yet its circulation is not strong,93 and its future is uncertain as it struggles to compete with larger digital conglomerates. Nasihin argues that even with Thohir’s business connections, the company simply does not have enough capital to grow further in the digital era. ‘Why aren’t we growing? It is simple. We don’t have the capital. We don’t have the promotional or marketing that others have. The factor of capital is so important’.94 In my interviews with media owners, few expressed interest in purchasing Republika¸ as they did not see the value of purchasing a suite of print newspapers, even with a niche market like Republika and most digital conglomerates already had their own online news sites and did not see the need to purchase republika.co.id. Republika’s future seems dependent on whether Erick Thohir’s business fortunes expand. But Thohir’s relationship with the Bakries is uncertain. In 2014 he was replaced as president director of Visi Media Asia by Aburizal’s son, Anindya.95 Thus, in a population of 250 million people, 90% of which identify with the Islamic faith, Indonesia’s best-known Islamic newspaper faces a difficult challenge. Tifatul Sembiring, former minister of communications and former chairman of the Islamic Prosperous Justice Party, sums up the view of many Islamic leaders when he claims: ‘Islamic media has less capital, and so is small. Many Muslim people feel: ‘Why don’t we have a representation through the media?’ They try to give the message

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through Youtube and other initiatives but there is no coordinated group or organisation’.96 This does not mean Indonesian mainstream media exclude Islamic themes, but they do so in rather commodified formats. For example, television soap operas and dramas involving the ‘virtuous’ Islamic housewife, plus a huge proliferation of religious preaching, advice and educations shows. This has meant a ‘mainstreaming’ of Islam into national culture, not from staunch conservative Islamic viewpoints, but rather from Islamic-themed shows being fused with secular television production formats.97 Inaya Rakhmani argues that Islamic themes are ‘commodified, transforming religious messages into products of commerce. At the same time, television owners and practitioners have been very careful in portraying televised religion’, for fear of fundamentalist Islamic threats or fear of losing their majority Muslim audience.98 Islamic media splintered after the events of September 11 and subsequent wars in the Middle East. Much of the fundamentalist Islamic media in Indonesia moved online, where it was cheaper, more anonymous and could incorporate viewpoints from elsewhere around the Islamic world. Yet more ‘moderate’ Islamic media began to disappear from the market.99 While advertising revenue for print media generally has been in decline, adding to this predicament is that Islamic media generally do not take advertising from cigarettes, alcohol or other products considered haram. The sidelining of specialist Islamic-based media signifies a growing trend in the digital era, which is that niche market media products are not financially sustainable. For example, at its peak, the magazine Sabili was considered ‘the largest Islamic publication in Indonesia’ and seen as a prominent example of the diversity of content and readership available in the Indonesian press.100 In 2002 and 2003 Sabili was selling more than 140,000 copies per edition. By 2005, those inside the Islamic media were reporting its ‘slow dance to the death’, due its inability to generate commercial advertising.101 In 2008, Sabili’s circulation had fallen to around 40,000 copies.102 According to Republika’s Nasihin: ‘Sabili and Hidayatullah actually had more circulation than Republika at a certain time. But they did not have a business model, or a corporation that could gain advertising. They were not getting revenue from advertising, and we were through pak Erick [Thohir]’.103 While the voices once represented in Sabili have moved online, and many small printed pamphlet-style Islamic media continue to exist, Islamic media have largely been bought up by large conglomerates (as is the case of Republika), or larger conglomerates have seized the market by producing Islamic-themed television programs. Are digital conglomerates fully to blame for the lack of a financially viable Islamic-themed media entity? The answer is not completely clear. While Islamic groups have become more vociferous in the post-Suharto period,104



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Islamic political parties remain a niche option for most Indonesians. It would seem Islamic media, too, have remained niche-market options for most Indonesian consumers, particularly with younger Indonesians. Pam Nilan wrote of Muslim youth media in 2008: ‘The specialised Muslim youth consumer market in Southeast Asia seems to have existed more in the minds of media producers with the money and/or for the faith than in actuality, if we are to judge by the many failures of targeted Muslim media products to thrive’.105 Budi Irawanto agrees, arguing that ‘Islamic content per se is not a cultural drawcard for consumers’.106 To conclude, in the pre-internet era, specialist print, radio and television companies made profits by tailoring advertising for specific products to their niche audiences. In the digital era, these audiences have been further fragmented, or those advertisers now invest money in their own websites. Content which consumers once purchased for a fee (e.g. in a newspaper) has been made available online free. As a result, many specialist media have either been forced to close, or have become part of larger digital conglomerates because of declining revenues. Or failing that, they have moved online where a large portion of content exists, fragmented and unprofessional, but available as niche sites. For media such as Tempo and Republika, surviving financially in the digital era will continue to be a challenge. Regional media Digitalisation has favoured the growth of companies based in Indonesia’s capital, the sprawling metropolis of Jakarta, home to around 10 million people (or 30 million if surrounding municipalities are included).107 Most media companies discussed earlier maintain their head offices in Jakarta, and it is Jakarta where all owners reside, and where the majority of business decisions are made. The result is that Indonesia’s media have become increasingly Jakarta-centric, involving a centralised model of news production. Television rating agency AC Nielsen surveys audiences only in the top ten cities, of which around 60% of viewers are located in Jakarta.108 Thus, television ratings depend heavily on the demands of audiences based in the capital. Of course, the trend to appeal to a Jakarta-based market is not exclusive to media companies, but digitalisation has allowed for increasingly efficient models of newsgathering and distribution between larger digital conglomerates in Jakarta and smaller, regional partners. Media conglomeration is occurring predominantly by larger Jakarta companies swallowing up smaller, regional companies through centralised national newsrooms based in the capital. While it is true that media conglomeration occurs in major capital cities in other countries with a large capital city that is the nation’s hub of business and

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government,109 in Indonesia this process has been exacerbated by a regulatory environment favourable to Jakarta elites. One pertinent example of this is the delivery of Indonesia’s ‘multiplexing’ digital television licences. As a result of this process, approximately two-thirds of regional television stations are now owned by large Jakarta-based digital conglomerates.110 Unlike the print media, where an owner can simply buy a printing press, broadcast media rely on government regulation, justified largely on technological grounds because limited frequencies create the threat of overcrowded airwaves and weak signal strengths. Thus, the government intervenes in order to regulate service quality.111 The move from analogue to digital television allows for a more efficient and lucrative use of broadcast spectrum because of the compression of the broadcasts signal.112 In Indonesia, digital frequencies allow for twelve digital television stations to be broadcast through bandwidth occupied previously by only one analogue station. This is called a digital ‘multiplex’ of channels, which occupy the same bandwidth as analogue, meaning the government needed to decide who should be awarded digital multiplexing licences.113 The decision was left to then minister of information, Tifatul Sembiring (2009–2014). Sembiring decided that companies who were successful in gaining multiplexing licences could use three of the twelve for their own stations, and could rent out the other nine to competitors or smaller operators. Sembiring says: ‘In 2013 almost 92% of countries had already moved to digital TV. Digital divided the spectrum and allowed for 12 channels. We saved one license for TVRI. We needed to protect that. So there were initially 5 others. So we had a “beauty contest” where we must select each candidate according to their budget’.114 In an effort to improve Indonesia’s communications infrastructure, Sembiring’s plan saw licences provided to companies who could improve communications infrastructure around the country. The ‘beauty contest’ judged whether the company had the digital equipment to maintain the multiplexing licence (one executive estimated this would cost Rp. 500 billion to do this) and most controversially, it asked companies to bid on how many digital set-top boxes they could provide to Indonesians at the media company’s expense. Sembiring saw this as a way to lessen costs for the government in switching from analogue to digital television, given that set-top boxes are initially required for this transition to be successful. Media conglomerates needed to bid a minimum of 100,000 set-top boxes to gain a multiplex licence. Obviously, only large conglomerates were able to enter the ‘beauty contest’.115 The policy also faced strong resistance from NGOs and activists, who argued it made the smaller, less politically connected TV stations beholden to the digital conglomerates.116 Suryapratama, chief editor of MetroTV, said his company had developed plans to build infrastructure



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throughout the island of Java: ‘We have had to buy the digital apparatus such as the towers. More than 100 billion rupiah at least has already been spent. Enormous amounts’. TransTV’s chief executive Ishadi SK said only wealthy media companies who could borrow money from foreign banks were able to afford to build this infrastructure.117 Companies that were not granted multiplexing licences were deeply unhappy. Satria Naradha of Bali Pos Group said, ‘Multiplexing is a joke. Why would we rent a digital license from a Jakarta conglomerate? TV stations should just be a content provider, they shouldn’t decide who gets multi-plexing licenses. This is bad for press freedom’.118 The decision was challenged by community groups and civil society activists, who expressed concerns about political interference in broadcasting and filed a request for a judicial review in the Supreme Court, which they won, meaning that all auction results for digital frequency allocation were declared void. Despite a Supreme Court ruling on 18 September 2012 to annul the regulation, Sembiring proceeded to issue multiplexing licences for Jakarta–Banten region on 27 September 2012. Unsurprisingly, the Jakarta–Banten zone was awarded to digital conglomerates SCTV, Trans, VisiNews, Media Group and BeritaSatu, who offered between 500,000 and 3 million set-top boxes.119 Later, a second round of multiplexing licences was offered by Sembiring, which he said was due to the ‘many requests for two more licenses’.120 Hary Tanoesoedibjo’s MNC and Peter Sondakh’s RTV were granted licences.121 Kompas Gramedia, Jawa Pos Group and Tempo all missed out. In fact, Tempo did not even bid because they could not afford to provide 100,000 set-top boxes. The ‘beauty contest’ laid bare the nature of Indonesia’s media oligopoly in the digital era. First, it showed how the government created a process which was open to accusations of bribery, and where wealthy, politically aligned individuals ultimately benefitted. Established Jakarta-based digital conglomerates could afford the set-top boxes, while smaller independent media could not.122 Second, despite media companies’ claims about their success or strengths, the bidding exposed those who had the most capital and influence to advance in the digital era. Finally, the bidding also showed how new Jakarta-based television players RTV (35 local stations) and NetTV (16) were attempting to gain a foothold in regional markets. To acquire local stations, television companies must obtain licences from the local branch of the Indonesian Broadcasting Commission.123 This has led to a game of politics, networks and patronage. Often, it is only digital conglomerates which are able to gain licences from local authorities (which can include the mayor, the local Indonesian Broadcasting Commission official and local officials within the Ministry of Information) because of their networks within these provinces. Jakarta-based media moguls can partner with local politicians or businessmen in order to win their support to establish the

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television station and gain official approval from the local Indonesian Broadcasting Commission. Doing so requires a good knowledge of the main political players in each province. Hary Tanoesoedibjo, who has been successful in gaining 42 local television stations by 2015, agreed that the key was finding the right local political player: ‘Local TV is very egocentric. Owning a TV station is like a pride for them [local part-owners]. They can use their TV stations to interview the governor or the mayor and then lobby the government’.124 This has been a problem for some time. Paulus Widiyanto, former head of the Broadcasting Law Commission, told a House hearing in 2010 that bribery and collusion were regular practices in determining who won broadcasting frequencies. He said, ‘Media owners will do whatever it takes to trick us out. I hope this is watched, because the owners of local media entities are sometimes not businessmen but the workers from those companies [digital conglomerates], so everything is possible here and I am asking you to watch out for this capital ownership issue’.125 The centralised newsgathering company is not limited to television. As we have heard previously, the model of a central company with many local arms has been adopted in the print industry by Jawa Pos Group and Kompas Group. Independent regional newspapers, such as Bandung’s Pikiran Rakyat, once the sole newspaper in Bandung, face a steadily declining circulation and serious competition from Jawa Pos Group’s Radar Bandung and Bandung Ekspres, as well as Kompas Group’s Tribune Java. Pikiran Rakyat has been approached by owners of digital conglomerates who are interested in purchasing the company (which includes local radio licence PRFM).126 It is true, too, that the business models of digital conglomerates allow for local media to exist in provinces where they otherwise may not. David Hill has argued that many local media in Indonesia are ‘resilient and engaged – if financially weak’ but that they play ‘a valuable contributory role’ in the process and growth of a strong and viable democracy.127 For example, the success of the Jawa Pos Group has assisted with the creation of credible local newspapers such as Lombok Post, Ambon Ekspres and Cenderawasih Pos. These newspapers can provide articles which keep government activities transparent and allow for important, credible, locally produced news and information. However, in the case of local television stations, local content is not necessarily going to be regularly produced.128 Jakarta-based conglomerates are using digitalisation to link regional areas to their national content. In this regard, it enables them to get around existing laws which do not allow for nationwide television stations, such as the 2002 Broadcasting Law which mandates the establishment of a network-based broadcasting system, compelling national television channels to limit their reach.129 For example, when MNC group established iNews, a 24-hour free-to-air news television station,



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it combined 46 local channels under one news-editing umbrella. iNews will regularly use Jakarta-based news from RCTI and MNCTV in its broadcast to the provinces.130 Thus, for digital conglomerates purchasing local television stations, the aim is more about expanding their Jakarta-based television news content than about servicing the community with locally produced news and programs. Perhaps the greatest significance of the rise of Jakarta-based digital conglomerates is that it has led to the decline of the ‘regional’ media mogul.131 In 2011, professor of media at Airlangga University, Rachma Ida, pointed to Jawa Pos Group’s Dahlan Iskan in East Java and Bali Post Group’s Satria Naradha as ‘regional kings’. As we heard earlier in this chapter, Dahlan moved to Jakarta as part of the political elite, eventually joining President Yudhoyono’s Partai Demokrat and becoming a minister in his government. Dahlan’s JPNN grew from a ‘regional king’ to becoming a national digital conglomerate. The second ‘regional king’, the Balinese Hindu Naradha family’s Bali Post Group has long dominated the media landscape on the island of Bali. But owner Satria Naradha’s prominence has been challenged by Jakarta-based conglomerates entering the regional market. Bali Pos newspaper faces significant competition from conglomerates Jawa Pos (Radar Bali) and Kompas Group (Tribune Bali). BaliTV’s profits have declined, and it rents a satellite from IndoSat to broadcast. Naradha claims that ‘we must fight these big companies’ because their Jakarta-centric programs will only lead to ‘ten to twenty percent local’ content. He argues that Balinese Hindu audiences would not be catered for. ‘They are like preman [gangsters]’, he says, ‘their income is much bigger, and they have a business view of the media. I’m more interested in culture’.132 Naradha’s approach has been to portray his media companies as promoting local culture, while he has also invested in media in Surabaya, Yogyakarta, Aceh and Semarang. But much like his competitors on a national stage, Naradha has used Bali Pos Group to influence local politics.133 His media organisations campaigned for PDI-P’s AA Ngurah Puspayoga over incumbent Manku Pastika (Golkar) for the Bali governor election in 2013. Naradha says: ‘It was my opinion that Mangku Pastika should not run a third term’.134 The fact that Pastika was re-elected despite opposition from the ‘regional king’ Bali Pos Group is perhaps an indication of its declining influence. A more obvious reflection of the difficulty Naradha faces in competing with national media has been his need to form an alliance of local media owners. In 2002 Naradha and others created the Asosiasi Televisi Lokal Indonesia (ATVLI), the Local Television Association, to challenge the dominance of Jakarta-based nationwide television broadcasters.135 He says:

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‘The government doesn’t acknowledge local TV. We need protection from the government. We need to have a dream how to maintain the local through the regional’.136 Naradha was joined by Bambang Santoso of CahayaTV, who bought a television station in Banten province in West Java in 2002, and later began other local television stations in Maluku and Cirebon, eventually owning 25 local television stations by 2015. The ATVLI has had some success in hindering the ambitions of national conglomerates, but ‘regional kings’ have declining influence. This section has shown that specialised or independent regional media are in decline in the digital era. This conclusion leads us to ask: can anyone challenge the market dominance of the existing digital conglomerates in Indonesia? So far, it would seem the only viable alternatives in the mainstream media industry seem to be new players who are copying the business model of the digital conglomerates. New challengers include companies who have significant corporate funds behind them and have begun their media conglomerate through television. For example, Indonesia’s sixth-richest man and former New Order television guru Peter Sondakh established Rajawali TV in 2014. Another is NetTV, established in 2013 and owned by the conglomerate Indika Group, which is co-founded by Agus Lasmono Sudwikatmono, Suharto’s second cousin and Indonesia’s 24th richest man, and Wishnutama Kusubiando.137 They have some way to go before they become multi-platform digital conglomerates with supporting communications infrastructure, but are adopting a similar business model, investing in local television stations around the archipelago, and pushing their way into the free-to-air Jakarta-based television market. Other wealthy businessmen have tried this strategy and failed, such as Tomy Winata, who attempted to enter the television industry by buying Jakarta-based channels JakTV and O-channel, neither of which has been particularly successful. Winata sold O-Channel to the SCMA Group in 2014, and in 2016 was rumoured to be selling JakTV. Incumbent digital conglomerates have not been concerned with this competition, and it remains to be seen whether RTV and NetTV can buck the trend. The interconnectedness between digital conglomerates and regional regulators suggests that elite Jakarta owners have been advantaged by acquiring local television licences, and, for better or worse, ‘regional kings’ of media outside of the capital are in decline. CONCLUSION This chapter has shown that conglomeration and concentration is a trend in the Indonesian media industry in the digital era. A sustainable and profitable media business must provide multi-platform news, invest in communications



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infrastructure and expand audience reach to be nationwide. Indonesia’s digital conglomerates have also benefitted from a free market, neoliberal regulatory environment, which has allowed companies to be both content and network providers. From the early 2000s, the rise of global Western media ‘super-oligarchs’ had the potential to dominate the developing world’s media landscapes. As scholars looked at trends in media globalisation, they saw large US-based conglomerates such as CNN and Time Warner as part of a growing global media market, swallowing up local media companies and making media production more homogenised.138 This chapter has shown that this outcome has not eventuated. Global media companies have not dominated the Indonesian market and are not the key drivers of the industry in Indonesia. Rather, it is the national media conglomerates who have gained in power and influence. This trend is not confined to Indonesia. A cursory look at the 2015 Forbes rich list suggests national media owners remain a powerful force around the world,139 such as the Marinho family in Brazil, Subhash Chandra and others in India, Emilio Azcarraga Jean in Mexico and Surang Prempree in Thailand. In fact, rather than being dwarfed by global companies, Indonesian media companies are themselves beginning to spread out to Southeast Asia and beyond, producing content in multiple languages and for a regional audience. The rise of new global internet-based sites Facebook and Google will be discussed later in this book, as they are central to the production of news and information, but at present it is Indonesia’s digital conglomerates that remain the nation’s key providers of news and information. National television stations remain the most common source of news and information for Indonesians, and Indonesian language news sites detik.com and kompas.com continue to be more visited than international alternatives, even those such as Wall Street Journal or Rappler who have attempted to enter the Indonesian language news space. These news sites simply have more journalists and better national coverage than any international competitor. Digital technologies have created a new business model for most of Indonesia’s mainstream media. I have defined this model as a digital conglomerate. While large media companies have grown to become digital conglomerates, many smaller professional media companies face the conundrum of either becoming an arm of these digital conglomerates or risk being defunct. The infrastructure-poor competitors fear that having important and niche content (e.g. Tempo magazine’s dedication to investigative journalism) is seemingly no longer enough to survive. Despite the potential for digitalisation to bring about greater diversity, industrial media have remained the dominant business model of the early twenty-first century. This chapter has shown that the business models of these digital conglomerates all look virtually the same. They are all attempting to become national,

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multi-platform companies where news content becomes centralised and homogenised within each particular multi-platform company. The game plan of each company is also the same: take as much of the mainstream Indonesian audience share in as many platforms as possible, and build an ‘ecosystem’ of linked media and online business and communications infrastructure. Unsurprisingly given their business models, studies conducted elsewhere have pointed to the general tendency of these large conglomerates to mimic each other in content production.140 While Indonesia may have eight large digital conglomerates, in many ways they all provide Indonesians with similar news and information formats, a reduction of local news and where major differentiations are distinguishable predominantly by the angle of coverage which suits the owner’s business and political interests. It is to this aspect of owner influence that the next chapter now turns, to examine more closely the consequences of Indonesia’s oligarchic media landscape.

NOTES 1. Andra Leurdijk, Ottilie Niewenhuis and Martijn Poel, ‘The Newspaper Industry’, in Guiditta De Prato, Esteve Sanz and Jean Paul Simon (eds.), Digital Media Worlds: The New Economy of the Media (Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2014). 2. For example Ithiel de Sola Pool, Technologies of Freedom: On Free Speech in an Electronic Age (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1983). 3. A ‘horizontal’ merger is where one company takes another company that has a similar or identical product, in this case a television company purchasing another television company. A ‘vertical’ merger is where two or more firms, operating at different levels within an industry’s supply chain, merge operations, for example a television station and a satellite company. 4. For example see The Economist, 20 April 2006. 5. See Ben Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly (Beacon Press, Boston, 1983) said 50 companies were controlling the media in America. His 2004 edition The New Media Monopoly, he said it was five ‘corporate giants’. See also Robert McChesney, The Political Economy of the Media – Enduring Issues, Emerging Dilemmas (Monthly Review Press, New York, 2008). 6. Tim Dwyer, Media Convergence (McGraw Hill, New York, 2010), 158. 7. Merlyna Lim, ‘League of 13: Mapping Media Concentration in Indonesia’, 2010, accessed 31 March 2016, http://www.public.asu.edu/~mlim4/fi les/Lim_IndoMediaOwnership_. See also Merlyna Lim, ‘@Crossroads: Democratization & Corporatization of Media in Indonesia’, published by Participatory Media Lab and Ford Foundation (2011), 11, accessed 31 March 2016, http://participatorymedia.lab.asu. edu/files/Lim_Media_Ford_2011.pdf. 8. Ignatius Haryanto, ‘Media Ownership and Its Implications for Journalists and Journalism in Indonesia’, in Krishna Sen and David T. Hill (eds.), Politics and the Media in Twenty-First Century Indonesia (Routledge, London, 2011), 104.



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9. Yanuar Nugorho, D. A. Putri and Shinta Laksmi, ‘Mapping the Landscape of the Media Industry in Contemporary Indonesia’ (Centre for Innovation Policy Governance, Jakarta, 2012), 4–5. 10. Ross Tapsell, ‘Old Tricks in a New Era: Self-Censorship in Indonesian Journalism’, Asian Studies Review 36 (2012), 227–245. 11. Merlyna Lim, ‘The League of Thirteen: Media Concentration in Indonesia’ (Participatory Media Lab, Jakarta, 2013), https://www.academia.edu/7282028/ Lim_M._2012_The_League_of_Thirteen_Media_Concentration_in_Indonesia. 12. Oxford Business Review, Country Report, Indonesia (2012), 267. 13. Open Society Foundations Report, ‘Mapping Digital Media in Indonesia’, accessed 13 April 2016, https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/reports/mappingdigital-media-indonesia, 68. 14. Inaya Rakhmani, ‘Rethinking Indonesian Nationalism in an Age of Commercial Islam: The Television Industry, Religious Soap Operas, and a National Audience’ (Unpublished PhD thesis, Murdoch University, 2013), 45. 15. Ibid. 16. Ibid. 17. Household radio ownership fell from 67% at the close of 2006 to 51% in April 2009. Oxford Business Review (2012), 67. Some have predicted a resurgence through ‘digital radio’, and as traffic becomes a bigger issue in the cities, radio becomes a more important medium. 18. Lim, ‘The League of Thirteen’. 19. Interview with Judhariksawan, KPI commissioner, Jakarta, March 2015. 20. AC Nielsen Advertising Spending Growth Report, 2015. The next highest is ‘corporate ads’ at USD 2.3 trillion. 21. Ibid. In 2015, which included the local direct elections year, 68% of newspaper advertising revenue from government comes from local government advertising. In 2014 it was less (58%) but still significantly higher than the next category (political party/institution 21%). 22. Chairul Tanjung, The Extraordinary Story of Chairul Tanjung: Indonesia’s Most Inspiring Entrepreneur (Kompas Gramedia, Jakarta, 2014), 184. 23. Ibid., 306. 24. Ibid. 25. ‘Detik Resmi Dibeli Chairul Tanjung Transcorp Rp 540 Miliar’, Lensaindonesia.com, 4 August 2011, accessed 26 November 2016, http://www.lensaindonesia. com/2011/08/04/detikcom-resmi-dibeli-chairul-tanjung-terjual-rp-540-miliar.html. 26. Transvision currently only has around 2 million subscribers, in contrast to Hary Tanoesoedibjo’s MNC Group, which has 19 pay TV channels and has around 19 million subscribers. 27. CNBC, ‘CNBC and PT Trans Media Corpora announce Indonesia Partnership’, 10 January 2016, accessed 27 April 2016, http://www.cnbc.com/2016/01/10/cnbcand-pt-trans-media-corpora-announce-indonesia-partnership.html. 28. Ishadi SK, personal interview, Jakarta, 2015. 29. Ibid. 30. This includes Koran Sindo, Genie and Highend. Khorul Amin, ‘MNCN, SCMA Shine Amid Surging TV Advertisement’, The Jakarta Post, 1 November 2014,

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accessed 12 March 2015, http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2014/11/01/mncn-scmashine-amid-surging-tv-advertisement.html. 31. See MediaCom website, accessed 12 November 2015, http://www.mediacom. co.id. 32. Oxford Business Review, 2012, 265. See also Bloomberg data, accessed 23 December 2015, http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/BMTR:IJ. 33. At the time, Tanoesoedibjo said they were using 123 channels. 34. Hary Tanoesoedibjo, personal interview, Jakarta, February 2015. 35. Iqbal Fadil, ‘Luncurkan INews, Hary Tanoe kini punya TV berita’, Merdeka. com, 7 April 2015, accessed 21 April 2016, http://www.merdeka.com/peristiwa/ luncurkan-inews-hary-tanoe-kini-punya-tv-berita.html. 36. Rachma Ida, ‘Reorganisation of Media Power in Post-Authoritarian Indonesia’, in Krishna Sen and David Hill (eds.), Politics and the Press in Twenty-First Century Indonesia (Routledge, London, 2011), 14. 37. See Bloomberg data, accessed 27 December 2015, http://www.bloomberg. com/quote/SCMA:IJ Shares peaked at over 4000 in August 2015. 38. Amin, ‘MNCN, SCMA shine amid surging TV advertisement’. 39. ‘From Small Screen to Big Screen’, Forbes (October 2011), 34. 40. NexMedia, ‘Nex Media Profile’, accessed 10 April 2012, http://www.nex media.co.id/about-nexmedia/nexmedia-profile. 41. Maneul Irwanputera, personal interview, Jakarta, March 2015. 42. Adi Sariaatmadja, personal interview, Jakarta, November 2015. 43. Karl Shmavonian, ‘Next Tycoons: Anindya Bakrie Assembles a Media Power­house in Indonesia’, Forbes, 24 July 2012, accessed 12 November 2015, http:// www.forbes.com/sites/forbesasia/2012/07/24/next-tycoons-anindya-bakrie-assem bles-a-media-powerhouse-in-indonesia/2/. 44. Ibid. 45. See ‘Bakrie Telcom Debt Timeline’, Reuters, 18 February 2015, accessed 27 April 2016, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-bakrie-telecom-debt-timelineidUSKBN0LM2EP20150218. 46. Bloomberg makes its ‘river of money’ (estimated at USD 7 billion in revenue each year) from its terminals. Most Bloomberg stories have ‘scant impact beyond finance circles’, and Bloomberg TV was not even rated by ratings agency AC Nielsen because its audience is so tiny. http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/06/ mike-bloomberg-mayor-vs-mogul-119111.html#.VZVIBHnbKiN. 47. Khoirul Amin, ‘Media Groups Gain from Political Ads’, The Jakarta Post, 30 March 2015, accessed 20 November 2015, http://www.thejakartapost.com/ news/2015/03/30/media-groups-gain-political-ads.html. 48. ‘Indonesia’s MNC Group to Buy Bakrie-Owned TV Firm for 500 Mln-Sources’, Reuters, 19 June 2013, accessed 27 April 2016, http://www.reuters.com/article/ indonesia-bakrie-idUSL3N0EV1RW20130619. 49. Aburizal Bakrie, personal interview, Jakarta, November 2015. 50. ‘Bakrie’s Business Blues’, Tempo magazine, 12–18 September 2016, 14. 51. Ibid., 17. 52. Anindya Bakrie, personal interview, Jakarta, March 2015.



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53. See Hill, The Press in New Order Indonesia, 96. According to Media Group’s 2012 corporate report (p. 8), Media Indonesia’s circulation is 280,000 per day, while Lampung Post is 50,000 per day. 54. Ibid. 55. Suryapratama, personal interview, Jakarta, April 2015. 56. Ibid. 57. An attempted venture between Riady’s Lippo group and Malaysian media mogul Ananda Krishnan in the mid-2000s failed and led to a string of international lawsuits. 58. Peter Gelling, ‘Indonesian Billionaire Takes on The Jakarta Post’, New York Times, 18 January 2009, accessed 9 May 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/18/ business/worldbusiness/18iht-globe.1.19448566.html?_r=0. 59. John Riady, personal interview, Jakarta, 2011. 60. Sachin Gopalan, personal interview, Jakarta, March 2015. 61. Ibid. 62. Ibid. 63. Team Dealstreet Asia, ‘Indonesia’s Weak Economy Forces CVC, Lippo to Delay Plans to Exit LinkNet’, 28 January 2016, accessed 28 April 2016, http:// www.dealstreetasia.com/stories/indonesia-pt-link-net-share-sale-plan-put-on-holdlonger-wait-for-cvc-lippo-group-unit-to-exit-28806/. 64. Leighton Cosseboom, ‘This Is MatahariMall’s Gameplan to Beat Rocket Internet’, TechinAsia, 13 March 2015, accessed 12 September 2015, https://www. techinasia.com/indonesia-ecommerce-mataharimall-rocket-internet#! 65. Dahlan Iskan, personal interview, Jakarta, March 2015. 66. Rachma Ida, ‘Reorganisation of Media Power’, 19. 67. Ibid., 18. 68. ‘About us’ Fangbian Iskan Corporindo, ‘Sebagai grup perusahaan besar yang selama ini banyak bergerak di bidang media cetak (Koran) dan media elektronik (Televisi), Jawa Pos merasa perlu untuk masuk di bidang telekomunikasi. Perusahaan percaya bahwa bisnis telekomunikasi, yang merupakan bisnis masa depan, akan menjadi pendukung utama bagi kemajuan bisnis media yang selama ini ditekuni Jawa Pos Group’, accessed 28 April 2016, http://www.fic.co.id/about.html. 69. ‘NEC Wins Contract to Build Submarine Cable Asia Network’, System (NEC News, 30 March 2009), accessed 12 September 2016, http://www.nec.com/en/global/ prod/nw/submarine/news/2009/20090327.html. 70. Dahlan Iskan, personal interview, Jakarta, March 2015. 71. Yanuar Nugroho, Andriani Putri and Shita Laksmi, ‘Mapping the landscape of the media industry in contemporary Indonesia. Report series. Engaging media, empowering society: Assessing media policy and governance in Indonesia through the lens of citizens’ rights’, Research collaboration of Center for Innovation Policy and Governance and HIVOS Regional Office Southeast Asia, funded by Ford Foundation, Jakarta, March 2012, accessed 6 April 2012, 101. 72. Kompas Media Kit 2014, accessed 3 December 2016, https://kompasinter activedisplay.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/mediakit-2014-small.pdf. 73. Edward Herman and Robert McChesney, The Global Media: The New Missionaries of Corporate Capitalism (Continuum, London, New York, 1997), 54.

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74. See Benjamin Compaine, ‘Conclusion: How Few Is Too Few’, in Benjamin Copmaine (ed.), Who Owns the Media? Concentration of Ownership in the Mass Communications Industry (Knowledge Industry Publications Inc., New York, 1979), 319–340. 75. D. Vick, ‘Regulatory Convergence’, Legal Studies 26, 1 (2006), 32. 76. Oxford Business Review (2012), 271. 77. My focus remains on news, and so Mugi Reka Aditama Group, which has the largest franchise of magazines in Indonesia, and at least three radio stations and Femina Group, which has Indonesia’s top-selling woman’s magazine, Femina, are not discussed. 78. ‘SPS Media Directory 2013–2014: Integrasi Multiplatform and Monetisasi Digital’ (Serikat Perusahaan Pers, 2014), 22. 79. Nugroho et al., ‘Mapping the Landscape’. 80. According to the 2014 SPS Media Directory, Indonesia has 634 daily newspapers circulating to around 9.4 million people, most of whom live in large cities or urban areas, down from 665 in 2011. 81. ‘SPS Media Directory’, 54–55. 82. Aristides Katoppo, personal interview, Jakarta, November 2015. 83. Ibid. 84. Hill and Sen, Media, Culture and Politics in Indonesia, 200. 85. Toriq Hadad, personal interview, Jakarta, 2012. 86. Major shareholders include founder Goenawan Mohamad, along with property mogul Ciputra. 87. Republika was first owned by Habibie, Suharto’s protégé and future Indonesian president. It was owned by ICMI Yayasan ABCI BANGSA – PT ABDI BANGSA – Republika. See Republika’s first-edition editorial Tajuk, ‘Menguak Cakrawaka Baru, Menuku Masa Depan’, Republika, 4 January 1993, 21. Thank-you to Republika staff for supplying me with a copy of this first-edition editorial. 88. Nasihin, personal interview, Jakarta, November 2015. 89. Thohir owns the majority share. A small number of shares remain with the previous Yayasan. 90. Mahaka Group has Radio and TV-GenFM; JakFM; JakTV (with Tommy Winata, Electronic City and Eric Thohir). 91. Titiana Veda, ‘Indonesian Media Manager a Man on a Mission’, The Jakarta Globe, 22 July 2009, accessed 12 July 2015, http://www.webcitation.org/64czge90q. 92. Nasihin, personal interview, Jakarta, November 2015. 93. Around 150,000 copies per day. 94. Nasihin, personal interview, Jakarta, November 2015. 95. ‘Anindya Bakrie Gantikan Erick Thohir sebagai Presdir’, Bisnis Keuangan, 4 July 2014, accessed 21 April 2016, http://bisniskeuangan.kompas.com/read/2014/07/ 04/0834142/Anindya.Bakrie.Gantikan.Erick.Thohir.sebagai.Presdir.VIVA. 96. Tifatul Sembiring, personal interview, Jakarta, April 2015. 97. Rakhmani, ‘Rethinking Indonesian Nationalism’, 28. 98. Ibid. 99. Irawanto, ‘Riding Waves of Change’, 70–72. His table lists 44 different types of Islamic press in contemporary Indonesia. 100. Ibid., 74.



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101. A. Muhammad, ‘Quo vadis Media Islam Moderat?’ Jaringan Islam Liberal, 20 March 2005, accessed 14 March 2016, http://islamlib.com/id/artikel/quo-vadismedia-islam-moderat/. 102. Greg Fealy, ‘Consuming Islam: Commodified Religion and Aspirational Pietism in Contemporary Indonesia’, in G. Fealy and S. White (eds.), Expressing Islam: Religious Life and Politics in Indonesia (Singapore: ISEAS, 2008), 22. 103. Nasihin, personal interview, Jakarta, November 2015. 104. Jennifer Lindsay, ‘Media and Morality: Pornography Post Suharto’, in Hill and Sen (eds.), Politics and the Media, 188. 105. Pam Nilan, ‘Muslim Media and Youth in Globalizing Southeast Asia’, in Youna Kim (ed.), Media Consumption and Everyday Life in Asia (Routledge, New York, 2008), 56. 106. Budi Irawanto, ‘Riding Waves of Change: Islamic Press in Post-Authoritarian Indonesia’, in Hill and Sen (eds.), Politics and the Media, 78. 107. While Jakarta’s population is 10 million, the increased sprawl has seen the use of the term ‘Jabodebotek’ to include surrounding municipalities Depok, Bogor, Bekasi and Tanggerang, which is a population of around 30 million people. 108. The top ten cities are Jakarta, Bandung, Surabaya, Semarang, Medan, Makassar, Yogyakarta, Denpasar, Palembang and Banjarmasin. 109. For example, Elena Vartanova and Sergei Smirnov, ‘Contemporary Structure of the Russian Media Industry’, in Rosenblum, Nordenstreng and Trubina (eds.), Russian Media and Changing Values (Routledge, Oxon, 2010), 21–40. 110. ‘SPS Media Directory’, 22. 111. Esteve Sanz, ‘The Television Industry’, in Guiditta De Prato, Esteve Sanz and Jean Paul Simon (eds.) Digital Media Worlds: The New Economy of the Media (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 102. 112. Terrestrial transmission of digital services in the United Kingdom started in November 1998. Six multiplexers, each capable of transmitting 18 Mbps, were licensed by the United Kingdom’s Independent Television Commission. Transmission is carried out by various means: satellite, cable and terrestrial. Some broadcasters own their own transmission systems; others use a public or privately owned transmission system. 113. Ministerial Regulation No. 22/2011 stated that a service provider renting out the multiplexing of channels should be termed a ‘multiplex service institution’ (Lembaga Penyiaran Penyelenggara Penyiaran Multipleksing, LPPPM) and function as multiplex (MUX) operators. 114. This was Ministerial Regulation No. 22/2011. 115. Ade Armando, ‘The Greedy Giants: Centralized Television in Post-Authoritarian Indonesia’, The International Communication Gazette 76 (2014), 390–406. 116. Puji Rianto et al., Digitalisasi Televisi Di Indonesia: Ekonomi Politik, Petra Persoalan, dan Rekomendasi Kebijakan (Pr2 Media, Yogyakarta, 2012). 117. S. K. Ishadi, personal interview, Jakarta, March 2015. 118. Satria Naradha, personal interview, Denpasar, October 2015. 119. Seven ‘regions’ were created, and each digital conglomerate was awarded a frequency in all or most regions: MNC (7), TransCorp (7), Emtek (6), Media Indonesia (6), Viva (5). Lippo Group and RTV were awarded frequencies only in Jakarta.

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120. Tifatul Sembiring, personal interview, Jakarta, March 2015. 121. For the precise frequencies awarded in each region, see ‘Digital Broadcasting Dispute’, Tempo, 22 March 2015, 46–47. 122. Kuskridho Ambardi et al., ‘Mapping Digital Media: Indonesia’, Open Society Foundations Report, 13 January 2014, 59. 123. To set up a news station in Jakarta would cost around USD 10 million, depending on the cost of land where the transmission tower is built. One executive estimated around USD 1.5 million to set up a news station in a province, which includes building a mini-studio, an antenna and transmission costs. 124. Hary Tanoesoedibjo, personal interview, Jakarta, March 2015. 125. House Hearing 8/12/2010, cited Yanuar Nugroho, Shita Laksmi and Dini Putri, ‘Mapping Media Policy in Indonesia’, (CIPG, Ford Foundation Publication, Jakarta), 2011, 68. 126. Interview with Editorial Team at Pikiran Rakyat, November 2015. 127. See David Hill’s account of TVRI in Manado, South Sulawesi in ‘Media and Politics in Regional Indonesia’, in Krishna Sen and Terence Lee (eds.), Political Regimes and the media in Asia (Routledge, London and New York, 2008), 193. 128. Armando, ‘The Greedy Giants’, 405. Nugroho et al. ‘Mapping Media Policy in Indonesia’ (2011: 108) wrote that ‘perhaps community media will still be the last resort for citizens, although it will be more difficult for them to survive in the convergence and digitalisation era’. 129. Nugroho et al., ‘Mapping Media Policy in Indonesia’, 94. 130. 20% of MNC and RCTI content is news. 131. Rachma Ida, ‘Reorganisation of Media Power’, 21. 132. Satria Naradha, personal interview, Bali, 2015. 133. Thank-you here to the work and correspondence with Udayana University’s Ni Made Ras Amanda G. 134. Satria Naradha, personal interview, Bali, 2015. 135. Rachma Ida, ‘Reorganisation of Media Power’, 21. 136. Ibid. 137. Agus Lasmono’s father, Sudwikatmono, was Suharto’s cousin. Agus Lasmono is listed in Forbes as Indonesia’s 24th richest man in 2010. See Forbes online 2010, accessed 1 November 2016, http://www.forbes.com/lists/2010/80/indonesia-billion aires-10_Agus-Lasmono-Sudwikatmono_JS0U.html See also https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=j5-Pv7M_i10. Wishnutama Kusubiando is NET TV CEO. 138. See, for example, T. Lau and P. Ang, ‘The Pacific Rim’, in Alan Albarran and Silvia Chan-Olmsted (eds.), Global Media Economics: Commercialization, Concentration and Integration of the World Media Markets (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1998), 310–327. 139. The Forbes rich list includes Indonesian media moguls Chairul Tanjung, Hary Tanoesoedibjo and Eddy Sariaatmadja from Indonesia. See ‘Forbes Billionaires: Full List of the World’s 500 Richest People in the World’ available at https://www.forbes. com/sites/chasewithorn/2015/03/02/forbes-billionaires-full-list-of-the-500-richestpeople-in-the-world-2015/#77b275e445b9 (accessed 26 May, 2017). 140. Agus Sudibyo, Ekonomi Politik Media Penyiaran (Institut Studi Arus Informasi, ISAI and Lembaga Kajian Islam dan Sosial, Jakarta, 2004).

Chapter 3

Media oligarchs

Election night, 9 July 2014. Indonesia has two candidates running for president. One candidate declares himself the winner. He organises a rally at a park in the capital. It is broadcast live on one 24-hour news station, where he is categorically declared victor to all to those watching. Switch channels to another 24-hour news station, and it declares the other candidate the winner. The station has employed pollsters to back up its claims, which contradict other reputable polls. Other media organisations vary in their coverage. Some declare a clear victory for the first candidate; some declare victory for the second. Others report meekly that both candidates have claimed victory and that the result is unclear. Indonesians started the day hoping for credible and reliable reporting of a crucial turning point in their political history. Instead, confusion and uncertainty reigned. The potential for political instability hangs in the air. What could possibly explain such a scenario, in a country with a free and robust mainstream media? To answer this question, we must understand the influence of media ownership in Indonesia’s digital era. In extending the discussion of Indonesia’s political economy of the media, what is important is not only the total number of companies but also the effect of this increased oligopoly. As Hardy writes, ‘Concentration is one indicator of the ability of firms to exercise market power. However, it is the manner in which market power, and media power, can be exercised that matters, not merely the number operating in and across media markets’.1 This chapter explains how media oligarchs exert power and influence, focusing specifically on the period of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s presidency (2004–2014), in keeping with the time frame of this book and coinciding with a time of rapid advancement in digital technologies. 59

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This chapter argues that three broad trends have appeared with regard to media oligarchy in Indonesia. First, media owners have become more politically powerful. Second, media owners are generally gaining wealth. Third, media companies are more dynastic, with many children of owners inside newsrooms holding positions of digital media CEO or chief editor. The result is Indonesia’s mainstream media are far more partisan than they were ten years ago, which became abundantly clear in the coverage of Indonesia’s 2014 national elections. Examining the influence of wealthy and politically powerful oligarchs in Indonesia is not new. A key discussion among scholars of post–New Order Indonesian politics concerns the nature and influence of oligarchy. As Richard Robison and Vedi Hadiz explain in their seminal work Reorganising power in Indonesia, Indonesia’s ‘new era’ of democracy is dominated by New Order oligarchs who ‘have continued to preserve their ascendancy and the pervasive authority of a sometimes arbitrary and predatory state’.2 They argue that while an authoritarian government no longer rules, oligarchs from the New Order period ‘continue to dominate politics and business, while new ones are drawn into the same predatory practices that had defined politics in Indonesia for decades’.3 Jeffrey Winters, in his work Oligarchy, explains that the overarching goal of oligarchs is ‘wealth defense’.4 While neither Robison and Hadiz nor Winters pay significant attention to the media, their scholarship provides two main conclusions with regard to the effect of Indonesia’s concentrated media landscape. First, they contend that Indonesia’s mainstream media assist with oligarchic dominance, rather than counter it. As stated by Winters, ‘insofar as the media are heavily dominated by the same actors and political forces, it is unlikely that a critical free press or parties will provide the venues and vehicles for challenging this particular form of oligarchic domination’.5 Second, and as a result of the first, ‘serious presidential contenders . . . (and major local elections) must buy media access, which in some cases has meant buying television and radio stations and newspapers outright’.6 Winters argues that conflict and debate arise in Indonesia’s media predominantly due to ‘clashes between oligarchic personalities or political groups that own them’.7 This chapter extends this literature on the nature and influence of oligarchy by examining Indonesia’s mainstream media moguls and their influence on domestic politics. It explains how Indonesia has seen a more pronounced and politically powerful media oligarchy in the digital era. An oligarchic media system is of course not unique to Indonesia, and the nature and influence of media ownership are discussed and debated around the world.8 Indonesia’s media landscape is best described as a multi-oligarchic or competitive oligarchic system, where individual owners predominantly push their own interests



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rather than the interests of a broader cartel. Owning a media company has assisted these individuals to become more politically powerful, and as their digital conglomerates grow and become more centralised in Jakarta, their influence in Indonesian politics has tended to become more prominent. In this chapter I provide an explanation for how Indonesia’s media landscape has become far more politically partisan than it was at the beginning of the digital era. These trends have concerning consequences for freedom of the press and independent journalism in Indonesia’s democracy. THE RISE OF THE MEDIA MOGUL (2004–2009) In 2004, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was elected as Indonesia’s president. While part of the established military elite, Yudhoyono was a relative outsider when compared with other presidential candidates at the time. Yudhoyono says of the coverage of his campaign in 2004: ‘Normally the press is interested in the newcomer, not the incumbent. Because of that, it is natural that the press reported more about my activities at that time, maybe I became a new market within Indonesian politics and democracy’.9 In this regard, Yudhoyono believes the favourable coverage he received in 2004 was not because of any close-knit relationship with media owners, but simply because he was considered new and exciting. Yudhoyono’s first term coincided with the growing influence of two oligarchs who owned media companies: Aburizal Bakrie and Surya Paloh. These two men would do more than any other individual to shape Indonesia’s television news coverage over the next ten years. A running battle between them as rival political leaders, agenda-setters and ‘king-makers’ quickly became be a feature of Indonesia’s consolidating political and media landscape. Born in 1951, Surya Paloh became a successful businessman in Sumatra and a member of Suharto’s Golkar party in 1968. He invested in newspapers during the New Order, purchasing the newspaper Prioritas in 1986, though it was closed down by the New Order government 13 months later.10 As explained in chapter two, Surya established MetroTV in 2001 as the first 24-hour news station in Indonesia. It became Surya’s most important asset. Surya also developed political ambitions. He sought Golkar’s candidacy prior to the 2004 elections, during which time he regularly used his media organisations for self-promotion.11 In 2004, when asked if he would use his media companies to further his political interests, he responded: ‘If I can’t use them, what else can I use? If there are any journalists who disagree with this situation, they are free to leave Metro or Media Indonesia. I don’t want to be hypocritical’.12 Once his bid failed, Surya became a strong supporter

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of the Yudhoyono presidency in 2004, and after Yudhoyono took power, Surya became Golkar party Advisory Board chairman, with the aim to position himself to run as chief of the party and its presidential candidate for the 2009 elections. But in the race for Golkar chief, he faced competition from his great rival, Aburizal Bakrie. Aburizal Bakrie is the eldest son of New Order tycoon Achmad Bakrie, who founded the Bakrie Group in 1942. The company became one of Indonesia’s largest conglomerates, covering the length and breadth of its economy. Its businesses included mining, oil and gas, palm oil, property, telecommunications and finance. As explained in chapter two, Aburizal was a close ally of Suharto’s and member of the Golkar party during the New Order. He was the chairman of Bakrie Group from 1999 until he stood down to be in the running to become Golkar’s candidate for presidency in the 2004 elections. He lost, along with Surya Paloh, to former New Order general Wiranto, and, after losing, contributed significantly to the war chest of Yudhoyono’s ultimately successful campaign.13 Bakrie became a key figure in the first-term cabinet of Yudhoyono, serving as co-ordinating minister for economy (2004–2005) and coordinating minister for people’s welfare (2005–2009). He became the ‘political fixer’ in Yudhoyono’s first government: an ‘expert in working out which parliamentarians needed to be paid or cajoled or threatened in order to have bills passed’.14 By 2007, with his businesses flourishing, Bakrie had become Indonesia’s richest man with an empire worth USD 5.4 billion.15 The Bakrie Group created Indonesia’s second 24-hour, Indonesian-language free-to-air national television news station, TVOne in 2008. As both Bakrie and Paloh had presidential ambitions, the two fiercely locked horns in the race for the Golkar chairmanship in 2008. They flagrantly used coverage from MetroTV and TVOne to promote their respective campaigns, a clear sign that ownership was now affecting journalists’ autonomy.16 Speaking in 2015, Bakrie justified the partisan coverage by saying it was common for news organisations in the United States to support candidates: ‘It’s like how Fox supports the Republicans. CNN supports the Democrats. I’m competing with Surya as Chairman. TVOne is backing me up of course, and Metro is backing him up, just like CNN and Fox’.17 Bakrie won the position with 296 votes to Surya’s 240. But this was to be only one chapter of the political and media wars between the two owners, and a sign of what was to come. Bakrie’s involvement in purchasing media companies purely for political and business interests was evident in the Surabaya-based media. In 2008, Bakrie was fighting a public image war over his company’s responsibility for a destructive mud volcano on the outskirts of Surabaya which displaced more than 40,000 people.18 His company, Lapindo Brantas, tried to express its view in the media that the mudflow began due to ‘natural causes’, not by its drilling



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for gas in the area. Newspapers in Surabaya were particularly critical of Bakrie, and under this considerable public pressure, President Yudhoyono twice ordered Lapindo to compensate those displaced by the mudflow. In this context the Bakrie family bought Surabaya-based television station ArekTV, and the daily Indonesian language newspaper Surabaya Post. Two executives from Lapindo Brantas were made directors at the newspaper. Management in the Surabaya Post gave direct orders about the way journalists should, or should not, report the mudflow.19 The Lapindo mudflow began a slide in the financial fortunes of the Bakrie Group. The family hit further financial troubles, and the government looked to bail out Aburizal Bakrie for a second time (the first during the 1997–1998 crisis). In September 2009, the Indonesian government declared the mudflow a natural disaster. This assisted Bakrie’s companies financially as they were not required to pay compensation to victims, but it hurt Aburizal’s presidential ambitions, making him highly unpopular. It was in the political machinations in the capital where the Bakrieowned media could be utilised effectively. In late 2009, Bakrie engineered a campaign, including through effective use of his media companies, against Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati, who was making decisions which adversely affected his companies.20 Mulyani left the cabinet after it was clear her position had become untenable. Throughout this highly personalised battle between Mulyani and Bakrie, Yudhoyono remained silent and did not publicly support Mulyani, sending a message to the rest of the cabinet that if they became embroiled in political disputes, they could not expect his support, even if they were his minister.21 It led others to question whether Yudhoyono was concerned with unfavourable media coverage from Bakrie’s media outlets; others saw this as a reflection of the importance of Bakrie to a re-election bid of Yudhoyono in 2009.22 While Bakrie and Paloh vied for political and media power at the national level, in Indonesia’s regions media mogul Dahlan Iskan was growing in power. Jawa Pos Group was particularly powerful and influential in East Java, where Jawa Pos was the highest selling newspaper. In 2005, Jawa Pos advocated for its former chief editor Arief Afandi in his campaign for deputy mayor of Surabaya, East Java’s capital city. The support also included buying air time on talk shows and other forms of advertisement on television channels.23 Afandi and his running mate won the election. In his interview in 2015, Dahlan Iskan justifies his media’s coverage in this way: ‘We always support some candidates in Jawa Pos [Group]. . . it is almost always like that. In some other local newspapers they also support local candidates’.24 Dahlan argues that it is natural for a media company to support a candidate whom they think is a good choice for the province. By 2010, Jawa Pos had decided against supporting Afandi, preferring to support new mayoral candidate Tri Rismaharini (Risma), who was a regular

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visitor to the Jawa Pos newsroom in early 2010.25 One Jawa Pos journalist described the situation in this way: We have a candidate that we are basically supporting. In this case Azrul Ananda told us on the political desk directly that we should report more about Ibu Risma, and that she is the best candidate. Actually, I agree she is probably the best candidate, and I feel that does absolve me of some of my sins . . . I believe it is a sin because as a journalist it is not fair that we support one candidate more than others, especially in Jawa Pos which is so significant in Surabaya. We can directly influence people as to who they vote for Mayor.26

As Dahlan says, Jawa Pos is not the only local newspaper group which supports local candidates. Birgit Braeuchler’s research shows that in the 2006 mayoral elections in Ambon, journalists were involved in candidates’ campaign teams; regional and local politicians were involved in executive committees of some local newspapers and ‘tendentious’ and ‘biased’ reporting ‘gave the impression that each newspaper had its favourite candidate’.27 In Sulawesi, according to David Hill, it is widely accepted that media outlets ‘adjust their level of coverage of a candidate in accord with the level of support paid through either direct advertising or program sponsorship’.28 Thus, a news outlet’s support is often determined by which candidate supports them most financially. Local media companies also support candidates at a national level, including in the Jawa Pos Group. As chapter three explained, Jawa Pos grew from being a ‘regional king’ to become a national conglomerate, which makes their coverage of presidential candidates crucial. Dahlan says it has long been acceptable for his newspapers to support political candidates at national elections too: ‘Nationally we supported Gus Dur. We supported Megawati. We supported Yudyohono’.29 As Bakrie and Paloh entertained ideas of gaining the presidency for themselves, Dahlan became a key ally of Yudhoyono’s. Former minister of information Tifatul Sembiring (2004–2009) explained the strategy in this way: As a politician your capital is your tongue, and you need a media to connect the tongue to the people. Pak SBY [Yudhoyono] was very concerned with the media. Dahlan Iskan is the ‘king of media’ in the provinces. He has print media, so Pak SBY considers this situation. It’s very dangerous if Pak Dahlan Iskan is against him.30

The king of regional news, Dahlan Iskan’s media companies became central to spreading the message of Yudhoyono’s policies on decentralisation. Dahlan based himself in Jakarta to be more active in the Indonesian political scene, leaving his son Azrul to run the media company from Surabaya.



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Another Jawa Pos political journalist explained his professional practice in 2010: I know the constellation of politics and mafia in Surabaya. I know people who have a strong influence and the ones who are close friends with my boss [Dahlan Iskan] and who is not. I must know who is a close friend of the leadership in Jawa Pos. If I have to write a story about this close friend, I will call the editor, and ask ‘How should we cover this?’31

It is clear that in the provinces, Jawa Pos Group’s influence dominates the local print media landscape, and thus is politically very powerful. Yudhoyono also moved closer to the rising television mogul Chairul Tanjung. The son of journalist A.G. Tanjung, Chairul Tanjung became a successful businessman towards the end of the New Order, building his wealth predominantly through banking, property and, later, the media. Despite his increased control of the Indonesian television market, few scholars or analysts saw Chairul Tanjung as being particularly politically powerful. He was still seen as a ‘front man’ for major oligarch Anthony Salim.32 Furthermore, Chairul’s television stations TransTV and Trans7 produce only around 20% of news content, which means scholars are naturally drawn to the more partisan coverage displayed by Paloh’s or Bakrie’s 24-hour news channels. But Chairul Tanjung clearly impressed Yudhoyono, whose concerns about his image in the media were steadily growing. In 2007, Chairul co-ordinated the Visi Indonesia 2030 project, and drew in Anthony Salim and James Riady. From this point Chairul was said to become an ‘unofficial Presidential advisor’,33 although he remained away from the public spotlight. The connection became clearer in Yudhoyono’s second term, such as when Chairul’s television station TransTV exclusively broadcast Yudhoyono’s 2009 Partai Demokrat national conference.34 But Yudhoyono says Chairul Tanjung and SCTV’s Eddy Sariaatmadja were neutral, rather than slanted towards him, and in any case were not a good enough folly to counter the negative coverage which came from TVOne or MetroTV: TV owned by Chairul, Dahlan Iskan, [and] Eddy Sariaatmadja, to me they are not too hostile, but fair. These owners are not interested in getting into politics. And because they did not want a [24-hour] TV news [station], it was not possible for me to use them to be by my side to face TVOne and MetroTV.35

To a large extent, Yudhoyono is correct: the media of Chairul Tanjung, Dahlan Iskan and others were not flagrantly pushing his agenda. They often reported accurately the policies of his government at the time, sometimes without criticism, but not with fervent support. However, Yudhoyono felt that

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he had to maintain a good relationship with these stations’ owners in order for them to cover him fairly, and this led to these owners becoming more involved in his political party and his government. As Yudhoyono suggested, he maintained a friendly relationship with James Riady and Eddy Sariaatmadja, Chinese-Indonesian owners considered supportive of the his administration, but without direct political ambitions. Riady is no stranger to funding campaigns, having been controversially banned from the United States for donating money to US president Bill Clinton and other candidates.36 The Riady family’s skill is their ability to ‘establish new links with new repositories of power’, and a media enterprise provided a useful link to maintain good terms with the president.37 Much the same could be said about the Sariaatmadja family. Overall, Yudhoyono adopted the policy that it was better to moderate and massage Indonesia’s media owners rather than openly battle them in other media, or crack down on them through tighter regulation. In foreign policy, Yudhoyono aimed for ‘a thousand friends and zero enemies’ throughout his presidency. In many ways he also wanted this from the mainstream media. Yudhoyono also decided to produce his own media. He established the daily, Jakarta-based newspaper, Jurnal Nasional in 2006, appointing his spokesperson, Andi Mallarangeng, as one of the paper’s administrators, and hiring former journalist Ramadhan Pohan as its first chief editor. According to Pohan, Jurnal Nasional was established ‘so there should be a paper that did more than just report bad news – but good news as well. In Jurnal Nasional we have to highlight the thoughts of the President to make it easier for people to understand the ideas behind the policy’.38 Jurnal Nasional journalists complained about hindrances to their professional practice. Some journalists were reprimanded by Pohan when they asked critical questions at Yudhoyono’s press conferences.39 Throughout Yudhoyono’s first term (2004–2009) the media were steadily becoming more partisan, and media owners were becoming increasingly politically powerful. Yet, as we have seen in chapter one, media ownership was not a great concern to activists, political scientists, government officials or even media studies scholars in the early stages of Yudhoyono’s presidency. This is largely because stories of corruption and government mismanagement were regularly in the news, and, overall, Indonesians trusted their mainstream organisations to represent these events accurately. In 2006, for example, a World Values Survey asked respondents to rate their level of confidence in television as a medium, and 60% of Indonesians responded ‘a great deal’ or ‘quite a lot’, compared to only 24.5% doing so in the United States, and 18% in Australia. Similarly, 50% of Indonesians surveyed expressed ‘some’ or ‘great’ confidence in print media, compared to only 23% in the United States and 11.5% in Australia.40 Even by the election year of 2009, despite



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the arrival of MetroTV and TVOne as party-affiliated television stations, Adam Schmidt wrote that ‘during the elections their channels presented a wide variety of views’, and that ‘overall, Indonesia’s highly dynamic media landscape gave voters ample opportunity to access non-biased information. Around a dozen national television channels covered the elections, reporting on both the government and opposition parties’.41 The 2009 election was not close. As Yudhoyono admitted, he was ‘fortunate’ that his rival candidates were Megawati, who had already been president, and Jusuf Kalla, who was previously his deputy. He was re-elected easily, with around 60% of the vote, and he describes the overall Indonesian media coverage of the 2009 elections as ‘fair’.42 While Jawa Pos Group supported Yudhoyono in its coverage of the 2009 elections, they argue that their predominant reason for doing so was financial. Dahlan’s son Azrul Ananda says: ‘When we put Yudhoyono on the cover it sells. When we put [alternative candidate] Megawati Sukarnoputri on the cover, it doesn’t sell. It was as simple as that. People complain, but we were only giving the people what they want’.43 This reflected what many executives inside Indonesia’s newsrooms were saying in the immediate post-2009 election period: the most important factor in coverage was financial success; successful business models were paramount over the owner’s interests. Even in the Bakrie Group–owned companies, some chief editors were confident they could override interests of the owners, because the organisation needed to gain respect to make money in the digital era. Nezar Patria, then chief editor of Viva news, said in 2010: ‘We have a hard-line principle: that if the owner tries to intervene too deeply we will resign. If the public interest is heavier than the business interest we cannot compromise. It’s not a sin to work for media owned by a big businessman active in politics, but it will test how deep your professionalism is’.44 Viva did reduce coverage of the Lapindo mudflow, but for the most part the news organisation was able to report on daily politics and business without explicit instructions from its owners. The situation at the beginning of Yudhoyono’s second term was perhaps best explained by then–chief editor of the Riady (Lippo company)owned Jakarta Globe, Linn Neumann, who said in 2010: ‘We are not going to do investigative stories about Lippo group. That is a reality. Let somebody else investigate Lippo. Riady has said that he has certain values that he wants to promote, but he has maintained the editorial integrity and independence of the paper’.45 Thus, directions from media owners were not central to coverage of political news in Indonesia in Yudhoyono’s first term. There were examples of partisan coverage, most notably the 2008 Golkar chairmanship battle and the overt support for local mayoral candidates, but for the most part editors and journalists felt they could cover events and national politics relatively

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freely. But throughout this period media organisations were becoming more powerful digital conglomerates, and soon practitioners inside newsrooms began to describe ownership as the greatest hindrance to their professional practice.46 Many, including Patria and Neumann, did not remain in these organisations, as the professionalism of these organisations began to deteriorate rapidly. A PRONOUNCED MEDIA OLIGARCHY (2009–2014) Yudhoyono’s second term saw media moguls flex their muscles and give precise directives to media organisations. Media organisations were increasingly strategic assets for gaining political influence or favour. In addition to the growing conglomerate power described in the previous chapter, three main factors occurred in this period which led to a more partisan media landscape. First, Yudhoyono began to encourage media owners close to him to be more involved in his government. Second, those media owners who saw themselves as his political rivals began to attack him more vehemently, as they lay the groundwork for their own campaigns in the lead-up to the 2014 elections. Third, media companies were becoming increasingly dynastic, as owners placed their sons in positions of power within these news organisations. Yudhoyono’s re-election in 2009 saw those involved in his media companies rewarded. Jurnal Nasional chief editor Ramadhan Pohan became a Member of Parliament, and Andi Mallarangeng became minister for sport. Yudhoyono appointed Chairul Tanjung as head of his economic advisory committee in 2010, and in 2012 Chairul bought a minority share in Indonesia’s national airline, Garuda Indonesia. Yudhoyono soon called upon Chairul to undertake special tasks. For example, in 2013 Yudhoyono sent Chairul to South Korea to boost trade and investment, where he met with the South Korean president, personally delivering a letter from Yudhoyono.47 Chairul occasionally chaired meetings where the president would meet all chief editors of major news organisations in Jakarta.48 Dahlan Iskan, who had entered the power industry in 2003 when he bought power plants in East Java and Kalimantan, became chief of Indonesia’s power utility, PLN (Perusahaan Listrik Negara) in Yudhoyono’s second term. He was soon promoted as Indonesia’s minister for state-owned enterprises from 2011 to 2014. In 2015, then retired from politics, he explained how Chairul Tanjung was central to his appointments within the Yudhoyono government: I was recommended as head of PLN by Chairul Tanjung. SBY asked Chairul to try to convince me to take the job. I didn’t want to take the PLN head position



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at first, but Pak Chairul said, ‘Pak Dahlan, we are both businessmen, if electricity becomes a problem it will destroy our businesses, and our country will be in trouble’. So that’s when I decided to take it on. When I met with SBY I said [to him], ‘I don’t know anything about electricity’. SBY replied, ‘You have capability in management and leadership’. I wanted three years in PLN, but after two years SBY asked me to be a minister.49

Dahlan says his appointment as minister was at Chairul’s suggestion. He said the two were not friends, but when Chairul published an autobiography in 2014, he chose Dahlan to write an endorsement which described him as ‘the sort of Indonesian who everyone should aspire to be. . . . Not admiration for his wealth, but for his character’.50 By 2013, Chairul was more actively involved as a spokesperson for Yudhoyono’s Partai Demokrat, and by May 2014 he was appointed coordinating minister for economic affairs, following Hatta Rajasa’s resignation. Despite his increased links with Yudhoyono, those inside Chairul Tanjung’s media companies insisted that Chairul was not interested in politics. As a businessman, Chairul undoubtedly became a formidable figure. He created CT Corp conglomerate in 2011, which at the time made him the 11th richest man in Indonesia with total assets of USD 2.1 billion.51 But his position as a minister meant a deal with CNN Indonesia had to be put on hold in 2014, as the contract stipulated that the owner could not be involved in a political position or be a member of the government. A devout Muslim, Chairul was wooed by the Islamic Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), which declared in 2011 it would endorse him as their candidate for the presidential election in 2014. But Chairul declined, declaring that he has ‘no intention at all of becoming president’.52 Chairul’s political ambitions may not be overt, but his friendship with Yudhoyono saw him become a key media oligarch in Indonesia’s democracy and he has the wealth to run for president himself should he decide the time is right. While Chairul and Dahlan were now part of Yudhoyono’s inner circle, other media moguls began to distance themselves from the president, and toughened their coverage of him. After his bid to become president in 2009 failed, Aburizal Bakrie’s political and business fortunes slid. Once seen as the second-most important political figure behind only the president, he was no longer a minister in the Yudhoyono’s second-term cabinet. By 2012 for the first time he did not make the Forbes top 40 richest Indonesians list.53 Bakrie’s predicament made some people question an oligarch’s power in democratic Indonesia. As Mietzner has noted, this decline occurred during a period in which Bakrie became chair of Golkar, was close to the president and controlled several cabinet positions. He argues that the Bakrie company’s fortunes continued to face bankruptcy and that he had to enter into ‘humiliating

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bailout deals with offshore and domestic investors’ once the state refused to bail him out.54 As Mietzner notes, Bakrie’s situation does not contradict oligarchy theory but rather show how oligarchs do not always get their way. Despite some suggestion that Bakrie would sell his media companies to pay off other debts, they remained an important part of his political armoury. Bakrie admits that Yudhoyono migrated more towards Chairul Tanjung, because ‘they have the same idea, same vision’ while he and Yudhoyono clearly ‘didn’t have the same short-term vision’.55 The difference in vision was clearly reflected in the way Bakrie’s media companies covered the president and his government’s policies. Surya Paloh also toughened up his coverage of the Yudhoyono administration. After his loss to Bakrie over the Golkar chairmanship, Surya started his own political ‘organisation’, the Partai Nasional Demokrat, which many believed would be disbanded if the Golkar party decided to ask Surya to become leader instead. Golkar stuck with Bakrie, so Surya eventually made ‘NasDem’ an official political party in 2011. Executives inside Surya’s Media Corp began to argue that it was inevitable the media companies would promote their owner’s interest, and that impartiality of the media was impossible. Media Indonesia’s then–chief editor, Suar Hutabarat, said in 2010: ‘Everyone knows Surya wants to one day become president. The public understands that our newspaper will be sympathetic towards him. Every newspaper has a preference for a candidate and no media is absolutely independent in the time of elections’.56 Lisa Luhur-Schad, president director of Media Indonesia, said the paper’s readership was not overly concerned about this vested interest and that they accepted it: ‘At election time, Surya Paloh never stops us from covering others [candidates], but he uses more pages and space for himself. We still cover the others. Everyone knows Media Indonesia is owned by Surya Paloh’.57 Surya did use his media companies not only to promote NasDem but also to improve his standing with other political parties. Putra Nababan, the son of PDI-P politician Panda Nababan, became MetroTV’s chief editor, just one indication of the unofficial alliance between PDI-P, Surya Paloh and his media organisations.58 In one example, in 2011, Nababan told MetroTV reporter Prisca Niken to cover the activities of a little-known mayor of Solo and PDI-P member, Joko Widodo, as a potential PDI-P candidate for the Jakarta governor’s role. Niken admitted later she had difficulty finding stories, but upon instruction from Nababan continued covering Widodo for two weeks, filing a story each day.59 It would be the start of a close relationship between MetroTV and the man who would become Indonesia’s president, ‘Jokowi’. Yudhoyono’s second term heralded the rise of Hary Tanoesoedibjo as a part of the political party scene. Tanoesoedibjo joined NasDem in 2011, but after falling out with Surya Paloh he left the party in 2013. He joined



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Wiranto’s Hanura party, which the former Golkar presidential candidate had established in 2006. Yudhoyono knew that Tanoesoedibjo, now with three television stations, was an important figure who could improve his popularity in his second term. Tanoesoedibyo claimed he was approached to become a minister, but that he declined because: ‘I wasn’t interested in being a minister. Either I run [for president] or I don’t’.60 Tanoesoedibjo said Yudhoyono ‘occasionally tried to get the media to portray his views. He was an image building person, not really focusing on the substance but rather the image and perceptions’.61 Tanoesoedibjo preferred to distance himself from Yudhoyono and his main business rival Chairul Tanjung, and migrated more towards the political and media connections of Aburizal Bakrie. The negative coverage of Yudhoyono was having an effect on his popularity. He was often depicted in the mainstream media as a water buffalo, which he admitted portrayed him as ‘lazy, big, and stupid’.62 He had clearly developed a reputation of being indecisive and ineffectual, and his popularity plummeted from 75% in November 2009 to 38% in September 2011.63 Rather than pursue meaningful reforms without worrying about the burden of re-election, Yudhoyono instead became somewhat obsessed with his image.64 He continued to pursue a presidency highlighted by ‘the joys of ceremony and increasingly pompous speeches’,65 most of which were covered live only by state-owned TVRI. He also focused far more on what those in the media were saying about him. As Greg Fealy wrote in 2011: Every morning, he and his wife, Ani, are said to pore over the newspapers at breakfast, paying particular attention to critical coverage of the palace or the government. Personal attacks on SBY in the media will often agitate him for hours, if not days.66

Yudhoyono felt that he was not receiving fair coverage in the mainstream media and put the blame on media owners with their own political ambitions. He said the biggest problem was that his policies were not being reported accurately, and that the media would often only criticise and not report the government’s point of view, or ‘cover both sides’.67 In 2015, Yudhoyono reflected on the TVOne–MetroTV coverage in his second term: Of course both of them disliked me because of my policy, and perhaps the owner has political ambitions for his own party who must attack me and discredit me to bring down my popularity and electability. Probably, that’s politics. In almost ten years that most intense [attacks] strike me as from MetroTV and TVOne.68

To Yudhoyono, much of the criticism was unjustified and unfair, driven by media owners with their own political ambitions. He often met with

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these media owners, or asked others to meet with them on his behalf, in an attempt to shape coverage of his policies. Aburizal Bakrie said Yudhoyono often ‘complained to me if there is bad representation of the government by TVOne’.69 Dahlan Iskan says Yudhoyono’s style was not to talk directly with him about the media, instead preferring to get ‘someone else, like Andi Mallarangeng to talk to the Chief Editor [of Jawa Pos]’.70 Yudhoyono has been described as a ‘moderating’ president, where he tried to bring key political figures and critics closer to his inner circle in order to win their favour. This approach may have worked with Chairul Tanjung and Dahlan Iskan, it did not stop negative coverage in media companies of rival political parties. Yudhoyono became increasingly despondent in his handling of the mainstream media. He refused to conduct interviews with journalists, even those accredited to the presidential palace, and time for questions at his palace press conferences was rare. Increasingly concerned at the way the mainstream media were portraying him, he preferred to create his own content. He produced YouTube video interviews with tame, pre-determined questions read to him by palace media staff, and increasingly used Facebook and Twitter, signing off regularly from personal tweets with *SBY*. He regularly checked his number of followers and was delighted if this number grew sharply.71 He even produced a book while in office, Selalu Ada Pilihan (There Is Always a Choice), one of the first ever sitting leaders to do so. His speech for National Press Day in 2013 reflected his somewhat despondent attitude to the decline of fair and balanced journalism in the country over which he presided: ‘I hope journalists will actively contribute to the creation of an improved political atmosphere, democracy and election. Give enough space [for all] and be relatively fair. Admittedly, this may be difficult. I have to be realistic’.72 Yudhoyono’s second term delivered two important trends for media and politics in Indonesia. The first was the increase in media owners who were now key players on the political stage. While Aburizal Bakrie was always a key figure in the media and political realm, he was now chief of Golkar. Surya Paloh had his own political party which was not insignificant. Hary Tanoesoedibjo became the vice-chair of another political party and signalled his clear intentions to align his media companies with his political ambitions. Chairul Tanjung had risked a business deal with CNN to take over the role of coordinating minister for economic affairs, and Dahlan Iskan campaigned as a presidential candidate. The political rise of younger media moguls Chairul, Tanoesoedibyo and Dahlan is not insignificant. Because both Chairul and Tanoesoedibyo were previously seen as proxies for another oligarch (in Chairul’s case, Anthony Salim; in Hary Tanoesoedibjo’s case, Salim or Suharto’s son, Bambang)73,



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many underestimated their rapid political influence. Dahlan Iskan was also not initially considered part of the entrenched Jakarta media elite but rather a former Tempo journalist based in Surabaya. The digital era has seen these moguls rise in power, no longer as proxies or ‘regional kings’, but as full-fledged members of the Jakarta oligarchic elite. As one indicator of their rapid rise, Chairul Tanjung (aged 53) and Tanoesoedibjo (aged 50) were the youngest Indonesian billionaires in the Forbes’ Richest Indonesians of 2015.74 The second trend evident in Yudhoyono’s second term was the increasingly partisan coverage by media owners. Two political camps in the Indonesian mainstream media had broadly emerged. The first were those who regularly criticised his presidency, most overtly Bakrie, Surya Paloh and Tanoesoedibjo’s media outlets, whose owners were positioning themselves for the election year. This is not to say their criticisms were always unfounded, but they were more vocal than the second group, which constituted Chairul Tanjung, Dahlan Iskan and James Riady, who were allies of Yudhoyono’s. Inside these news organisations, editors often spoke of a policy which showed ‘respect’ for the outgoing president who had served his time admirably for ten years. Overall, Yudhoyono’s policy of being close to certain media oligarchs had been successful in some outlets, but those who chose not to be part of his inner circle toughened their coverage. As Visimedia Asia part-owner Erick Thohir predicted in 2012: News companies will come to be owned by political parties or by individuals who support those parties. Even if they claim to be independent organisations, their Chief Editor or their owner will still favour one politician or party.75

As the election year of 2014 loomed, media executives began to echo Thohir’s comments. First, that partisan coverage would be ‘inevitable’; second, that all media companies would do it yet claim to be independent and third, that having a partisan media company was now a key part of a successful presidential campaign.

THE 2014 ELECTIONS: A POLARISED, PARTISAN MEDIA LANDSCAPE As the stage had been set for a sensationalised and polarised election year in 2014, Indonesia witnessed some of the most partisan coverage of candidates that its post-reformasi democracy has ever seen. It would lead to major concerns for freedom of the press, diversity of media content and the health of Indonesia’s electoral system. By the election year of 2014, five out of the

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eight most prominent media owners were involved in political parties. The three prominent media owners who were not directly involved in Indonesian political parties are all of Chinese-Indonesian descent. Traditionally, Chinese-Indonesians have stayed out of political life (Hary Tanoesoedibjo is the exception here).76 Two owners established their own political parties (Surya Paloh and later, Hary Tanoesoedibjo), while Aburizal Bakrie began his reign as chief of Suharto’s former Golkar party in 2009. Dahlan Iskan and Chairul Tanjung were both ministers in the Yudhoyono government, and Dahlan was a contender as the Partai Demokrat presidential candidate in the 2014 election. Clearly, the majority of those media owners who have established digital conglomerates became more politically powerful in 2015 than they were in 2005. This concentration of ownership, enabled by digitalisation, has meant media moguls have become more influential throughout the later years of Yudhoyono’s presidency, and ultimately it led to the mainstream media becoming far more partisan in the 2014 elections than they were in earlier elections. Yet despite their partisan coverage, owners hoping to become leading presidential candidates in 2014 did not succeed in winning over the broader population. In all legitimate opinion polls conducted in the lead-up to the election, media owners were never popular choices. Despite having the entrenched power of the Golkar party behind him, Aburizal Bakrie was ranked third as presidential candidate in early 2014, polling at only 10–15%. Surya Paloh remained largely unpopular in all surveys in 2013 and 2014, polling as presidential candidate at around 5% at best. Hary Tanoesoedibjo’s campaign was largely ineffective, and he polled at a miniscule 1–2%. Dahlan Iskan made a late attempt to become the presidential candidate for Yudhoyono’s Partai Demokrat, portraying himself as a man of action, and uploading YouTube clips of him chastising government officials. He got voted in by Partai Demokrat to be their presidential candidate, but his popularity was also around 10%. Chairul Tanjung never made any public statement of intent to become a politician, and in one poll he was rated around 1–2%.77 These polls show that media power does not automatically lead to political popularity. The two standout candidates were Prabowo Subianto, himself an oligarch78 but who did not own any media, and the media-savvy Jakarta governor Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo, backed by PDI-P and Megawati Sukarnoputri, who also did not own media. As the election year began, Jokowi was the clear front-runner in all legitimate polls. In the lead-up to the legislative elections in early 2014, owners instructed news executives to reduce their coverage of Jokowi. Executives explained to journalists that if they needed a quote regarding the Jakarta city administration, they should ask the vice-governor. In some cases journalists told stories of editors checking to see what stories were scheduled, and removing any story about Jokowi on the planning sheet. Jokowi said in January 2014,



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‘People ask me, “Why are you not on TV?” and I say “Well, it’s because I don’t have a newspaper or a TV station.” ’79 For example, MetroTV’s coverage of Jokowi thinned out, and in the lead-up to the April 2014 legislative elections, politically connected media companies – including MetroTV – began to attack him. MetroTV’s chief editor, Putra Nababan, argued that: ‘We started to be critical and have hard-hitting interviews after the first hundred days, and on his anniversary [of his election victory as Jakarta Governor] to have a dialogue: what has he achieved?’80 It seemed the main aim for MetroTV was to gather as many votes away from Jokowi’s PDI-P and towards NasDem in the legislative elections. In April, Jokowi reportedly met with Surya Paloh to ask him for fairer treatment.81 Numerous journalists were assigned to cover the station’s owner (e.g. TVOne and Bakrie, or MetroTV and Surya Paloh) during the legislative election campaign. In early 2014, the Indonesian Broadcasting Commission criticised MetroTV for giving too much time to NasDem, arguing that 34 advertising spots were delivered to Surya’s party, while the next highest party had only 8 spots.82 Chief Editor Suryapratama said of this situation: ‘2014 was a little different. NasDem was formed as a political party. They had spent a lot of money’.83 Hary Tanoesoedibjo campaigned strongly personally and through his media outlets for the Hanura party in the 2014 legislative elections. Two television programs broadcast by Hary Tanoesoedibjo’s MNC faced scrutiny from the Indonesian Broadcasting Commission for blatantly pushing Hanura’s agenda through a ‘quiz’ where the answers were all Hanura-based. Tanoesoedibjo explains it in this way: ‘It’s legal. Every election requires strategy. If a particular strategy does not work, you move on to the next strategy’. The KPI summoned Tanoesoedibjo and sent a letter of complaint. While the KPI lacked the mechanisms or power to enforce sanctions, Hary Tanoesoedibjo did cut the quiz program, deciding to ‘move on’ to the next media campaign strategy.84 The result of this media politicisation meant the legislative elections were a kaleidoscope of favourable coverage of certain individuals, regular and drawn-out updates of owner’s daily movements, with very few policies or issues discussed. While it was easy to distinguish the personalities of the candidates (depending on which media an observer consumed), it was difficult to ascertain exactly what these candidates stood for. This is in keeping with Indonesia’s nebulous political party ideologies but is further exacerbated when candidates feel that the main driver of success is extensive media coverage, rather than by detailing clear policies or objectives for the country which differentiate themselves from other candidates. Indonesia’s electoral system requires that a coalition of parties be assembled after the legislative elections in order to achieve over 25% of votes to

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nominate a president. After the legislative elections concluded, two groups eventually formed – Jokowi’s coalition ‘Great Indonesia’ and Prabowo’s ‘Red and White Coalition’. Surya Paloh’s NasDem achieved a respectable 6.71% of votes, which allowed it to be a key player in a coalition of 25% of votes with Jokowi’s PDI-P (which garnered 19%).85 Golkar reached 16%, but Bakrie knew he could not win and decided not to run. He said, ‘The presidential election depends very much on the person. Legislative election depends on the person and the party’.86 Bakrie and Golkar joined Prabowo’s coalition, as did Tanoesoedibjo and most of the major Indonesian oligarchs. Tempo reported that Prabowo offered Aburizal Bakrie the vice-presidential nomination at a price of Rp. 3 trillion (USD 250 million) and a cost-sharing deal was offered to Hatta Rajasa of PAN, who ultimately gained the position.87 Bakrie’s media companies consistently promoted Prabowo’s campaign. TVOne’s election broadcasts ran with the banner ‘Prabowo – the People’s Choice’ running throughout the presidential campaign period. Hary Tanoesoedibjo decided to join Prabowo’s coalition, splitting from his party, Hanura, which failed to gain more than 6% of votes nationwide. Fadli Zon, chairperson of Prabowo’s Gerindra party, said the partisan coverage ‘comes naturally from the owner, there were no discussions about media with Bakrie and Hary Tanoesoedibjo. It just happens automatically’. He added that Hary Tanoesoedibjo ‘could have decided to stay silent and quiet once he broke up with Wiranto [at Hanura], but his support was important to us’.88 Tanoesoedibjo, who has made his fortune largely through running television companies, said remaining neutral was not a consideration: ‘I thought Prabowo was the better choice’.89 He used his TV stations to broadcast campaign events, where often he would speak as a lead-up to Prabowo’s entrance, a role also filled by Aburizal Bakrie within the Red and White Coalition, and fulfilled too by Surya Paloh within Jokowi’s coalition. Once NasDem was allied with Jokowi, MetroTV dropped its critical coverage, and sent reporters with him everywhere he went, while coverage of Prabowo’s campaign was minimal and negative. Jawa Pos Group’s Dahlan Iskan also explicitly supported Jokowi. His support was crucial to countering the ‘black campaign’ tabloid newspaper Obor Rakyat, which ran libellous material stating that Jokowi was a Chinese-Christian. The Dahlan-funded Pelayan Rakyat outlined Jokowi’s Islamic credentials and his beliefs. For good measure, it included a picture of Dahlan, Jokowi and his vice-presidential candidate Jusuf Kalla as the ‘Three Musketeers’. The English-language Jakarta Post also explicitly supported Jokowi, the first time it had supported a candidate in its 30-year history. The editorial stated: There is no such thing as being neutral when the stakes are so high. . . . One [candidate] is determined to reject the collusion of power and business, while



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the other is embedded in a New Order-style of transactional politics that betrays the spirit of reformasi. Rarely in an election has the choice been so definitive. Never before has a candidate ticked all the boxes on our negative checklist. And for that we cannot do nothing. Therefore the Post feels obliged to openly declare its endorsement of the candidacy of Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo and Jusuf Kalla as president and vice president in the July 9 election.90

As justifiable as this reasoning may have been, this appeal to voters would have been far more compelling had the newspaper’s owner, Sofjan Wanandi, not been part of Jokowi’s campaign team and close to Jusuf Kalla. The Jakarta Post reporting also came into question, including one excited front-page headline after the first debate – ‘Jokowi vs Prabowo: 1–0’ – in which Jokowi and his running mate Jusuf Kalla were said to have ‘swept all five segments’ with ‘firm answers that emphasized his achievements and proposed down-to-earth policies’.91 Even the respected magazine Tempo, whose reporting is usually exemplary, struggled to convince many Indonesians that it was indeed fair and balanced. After the election, its journalists placed Jokowi on their shoulders as he crowd-surfed throughout the newsroom.92 Other news organisations made reasonable attempts to cover the campaigns of both candidates. The news organisations owned by Chinese-Indonesians were generally supportive of Jokowi’s campaign, given that Prabowo had ‘dog whistled’ to some of the hard-line Islamic groups and their supporters.93 At one press conference Prabowo refused to respond to questions from the Jakarta Post, MetroTV, BeritaSatu and KompasTV because he said their reporting was ‘not fair and just’.94 Despite support for Jokowi in some media outlets, it has been argued there was a ‘yawning difference’ between oligarchic support for Prabowo and that of Jokowi, with the bulk of Indonesia’s major oligarchs supporting Prabowo.95 One estimate suggests that Bakrie and Tanoesoedibjo’s television stations account for around 70% of the television audience.96 The partisan coverage reached its height on the night of the presidential election. Among the examples of how some media companies rejected the notion of fair and balanced journalism, TVOne’s coverage stands out. Live in the TVOne studio, Prabowo claimed victory on the basis of dubious quick counts. Coverage seemed to have been planned long before the election night, with guests supporting Prabowo’s claim of victory already in the studio and primed for comment. Some idea of what went on was evident when one polling firm, Poltracking Institute, cancelled its agreement with TVOne in order to ‘maintain its professionalism’ after the TV stations favourable to Prabowo broadcast counts only from pollsters which gave Prabowo victory.97 Jokowi declared victory, but because most of Indonesia’s media outlets had become so partisan there was some confusion as to who to believe. Much of the

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international media, presumably in an attempt to cover both sides, reported rather uncritically that both candidates declared victory. Despite news stations allied to Prabowo supporting claims that the election result was manipulated, and that people should be outraged, there were no mass protests from Indonesians. If Prabowo and his oligarchs were trying to create unrest and doubt in the democratic system by using their media as loudspeakers, the vast majority of Indonesians ignored them. In the next chapter we will hear how a group of Indonesians used digital media platforms to negate the potential for unrest over the polling results, which ultimately trumped the power of traditional media platforms. As Mietzner has argued, oligarchs do not always get their way, and in the 2014 election, Jokowi won, and ‘democracy survived’.98 What does Jokowi’s victory tell us of the power of mainstream partisan media in shaping political views? This book does not delve into audience surveys, and even in highly educated societies there is difficulty in ascertaining to what extent the audience understands the effects of media. The dynamics of audience responses to media ownership and influence would require a book itself, and establishing the impact of control of the media on values (political or otherwise) is highly contested. In one early study conducted in the United States in 1980, 80% of respondents ‘strongly agreed’ the media had an effect on society as a whole, yet only 12% ‘strongly agreed’ that the media had a personal impact on them.99 This research is concerned with what media owners think they have achieved with their partisan coverage. As discussed earlier in this book, few scholars have been able to interview media owners and those inside the newsroom to discuss their idea of influence and power. In my interviews with Indonesian media oligarchs, almost all believe they were highly influential in gaining votes and winning support for their supported candidate. In the Jokowi camp, media owners pointed to coverage of a large concert the weekend before the election, just as Jokowi looked like he might lose. Media organisations ran extensive coverage of the event. Dahlan Iskan says: Because the election was so close, I do believe Jokowi needed me to win. In the final stages, the Pelayan Rakyat publication countered Obor Rakyat and my public support helped. I would say in the final stages the biggest help to Jokowi was: First, the Salam Dua Jari concert. Second, his trip to Mecca. And then third or fourth was me and helping counter the black campaign. We are a newspaper so we know the angles. My open support probably contributed 1% [of votes]. Our team also went to West Java to support. I openly talk to the public and my name has a good selling.100

MetroTV chief editor Suryapratama says, ‘Jokowi won because of Salam Dua Jari concert. If MetroTV didn’t broadcast that live he would not have won’.101 Many within MetroTV talk about their ‘influence’ as being crucial



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because they backed both President Yudhoyono in 2004 and 2009, and then Jokowi in 2014. They may garner only around 3–4% of the audience share, but they helped bring presidents to power, or so they argue. Likewise, Aburizal Bakrie vaguely argues that Jokowi won the election ‘because of social media’ (discussed in the following chapter) but on the role of TVOne he was clear: ‘The media influences votes. TVOne was fighting against all other media, and still got [nearly] fifty percent [for Prabowo]’.102 Hary Tanoesoedibjo was less certain, saying only: ‘The media played an important role in creating perceptions. Television was very crucial [during the election]. Social media was important too’.103 The issue of media influence and financial success has become a key discussion in media ownership. But does a news organisation lose audience and readership if it is overly partisan? Jokowi, when asked whether he was worried about the lack of coverage of him in MetroTV and TVOne in January 2014, said: ‘The people are smart, they know why. People know why and they will switch channels’.104 As we have heard, the most blatant form of media bias during the 2014 election was TVOne’s election night coverage. If Indonesians were turning on the television to find reliable information about who won the race for presidency, presumably the last channel they might choose would be TVOne. Yet the station topped the AC Nielsen rankings that evening, with 14.1% of viewers. Prabowo’s victory claims were supported by the Bakrie-owned ANTV, which ranked second with 13.1%, and Hary Tanoesoedibjo’s RCTI ranked third with an audience share of 12.7%. This means that around 40% of Indonesian television viewers were hearing that Prabowo was the victor (MetroTV’s audience share was 6.9%, making it a poorly placed seventh on election night). In January 2014, an Indikator Politik survey showed that 69% of Indonesians surveyed were satisfied with the political information provided by television.105 Yet in a survey after the election, despite the incorrect coverage of Prabowo’s ‘victory’ on many TV stations, few Indonesians actually believed that Prabowo won the election.106 Were the majority of these viewers Prabowo supporters (47% of the population)? Do viewers simply like the TVOne format, and make their own judgements about the accuracy of content? Yet, even after the election night, TVOne’s audience share remained strong and far higher than MetroTV’s, suggesting its misleading coverage did not deter viewers in the weeks and months to come. Clearly these contradictions raise more questions than answers. In Yudhoyono’s first term, media executives argued that the more biased and overt the political coverage, the less likely the media company will be financially sustainable, as consumers would switch to more independent news. Yet as the high ratings for TVOne on election night and afterwards show, it is problematic to presume that the more partisan the content, the less likely viewers are to engage with it. Alternatively, as digital conglomerates

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dominate the market, audiences may have fewer alternative options for mainstream media coverage. The arrival of Hary Tanoesoedibjo’s iNews and Chairul Tanjung’s CNN Indonesia as 24-hour news stations may indicate a further partisan coverage of politics and events to complement the existing channels of Bakrie’s TVOne and Paloh’s MetroTV. Even if it is proven to be incorrect, given that media owners believe they are central to a candidate’s political success and see their media companies as assets to improve their financial and political power, a highly partisan landscape will continue to flourish. WEALTHY AND DYNASTIC ENTITIES Media owners have become wealthier and more dynastic in the digital era. Their companies have successfully become key digital conglomerates, bringing them wealth both through their media companies and the ability to use their media assets to push other business interests and deals. The digital revolution has meant that media owners are placing their sons in positions within their companies. They are young and technology-savvy, and therefore seen as crucial to understanding a rapidly changing industry. This section explains how media companies in the digital era are now larger, dynastic companies where media owners maintain profound wealth. Business wealth Media owners of digital conglomerates generally became wealthier in the decade of 2005–2015. The precise details of their media company’s finances are difficult to ascertain as the companies are unwilling to provide them. However, a cursory examination of the wealth of media owners throughout the period of digitalisation provides some insight. Table 3.1 shows Indonesia’s media owners as ranked by Forbes magazine in 2007 and again in 2015. It shows that five of the top seven media moguls are in the top 20 of Indonesia’s richest in 2015. Forbes rankings are based on the value of the entire company conglomerate, not only media companies, so, for example, the Riady family (at #5 with USD 2.6 billion) is listed as Mochtar Riady who chairs Lippo Group, but run by his two sons: Stephen in Singapore, and James in Indonesia. In Indonesia, Lippo is the largest property owner and developer, and has businesses in banking, publishing and retail. Thus, while media owners have increased their overall wealth significantly from 2007 to 2015, this is not solely due to the success of their media companies. Nevertheless, the Forbes rankings show us that, with the exception of Aburizal Bakrie, the owners of large conglomerates have moved up in the list of Indonesia’s wealthiest.

4.3 2.6 2.3 1.35 1.3 *? – 387 million* 370 million*

Chairul Tanjung Mochtar/James Riady Peter Sondakh Hary Tanoesoedibjo Eddy Sariaatmadja Aburizal Bakrie Jacob Oetama Surya Paloh* Dahlan Iskan

4 5 6 15 17 – – – –

# rich list 2015 450 million 950 million 1.54 815 million – 5.4 130 million * –

Wealth 2007 (USD billion) 18 12 9 15 – 1 39 – –

# rich list 2007

Banking; retail; media Banking; property; retail Media; property Media; Media; Property; mining; palm oil Media; publishing Media; mining Media; power plants; property

Predominant business interests

Source: Forbes Indonesia’s Rich List 2007; 2015

* Aburizal Bakrie’s wealth is difficult to ascertain. In their December 2012 rankings, Forbes magazine reported that Bakrie dropped from Indonesia’s top ranks for the first time. Forbes started tracking the 40 wealthiest Indonesians in 2006. However, just six months later, in June 2013, Globe Asia (owned by the Riady family) estimated that Bakrie was Indonesia’s sixth richest with USD 2.45 billion. By 2013, The Globe reported in 150 richest Indonesians, that Surya Paloh was worth USD 387 million which included his media businesses, several top-name hotels, catering business Indocater and Surya Energi Raya. Dahlan Iskan was reported as USD 370 million.107

Wealth 2015 (USD billion)

Name

Table 3.1.  Media owners and wealth according to Forbes magazine

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Some owners, such as Chairul Tanjung, Hary Tanoesoedibjo and Eddy Sariaatmadja, have seen their wealth improve in no small part due to the financial success of their media businesses. Hary Tanoesoedibjo’s Global Mediacom was described by Forbes in 2012 as a market capitalisation of Rp. 30 trillion, with his overall estimated net worth USD 1.04 billion.108 Meanwhile, Peter Sondakh, one of the first to start a private Indonesian TV station, RCTI, back in 1987, has recently returned to the television business, establishing Rajawali TV in May 2014. Sondakh is the owner of Rajawali Group, a conglomerate with operations in mining, plantations, hotels and transportation. Surya Paloh and Aburizal Bakrie were not listed in Forbes in 2015, but their wealth was still significant (although difficult to ascertain). After the 2014 elections, Surya Paloh emerged as the second most powerful government patron after Megawati Sukarnoputri,109 and Tempo reported that he is prone to visiting the palace numerous times per day.110 In negotiations surrounding the coalition, Jokowi described Surya as a ‘statesman’ for not demanding the vice-presidency or any ministerial positions,111 but he placed four NasDem party members in his first cabinet. One of the first acts of the new Jokowi administration was to approve Surya Paloh’s company to import fuel from Angola. Surya pressured Jokowi to appoint a new police chief, and used MetroTV to defend controversial nominee Budi Gunawan. Negative coverage of Jokowi in MetroTV and others saw his approval ratings plummet from 62% to 41%.112 Indonesians joked that the biggest problem for new president Jokowi was not the opposition coalition KMP (koalisi merah putih [the Red and White Coalition]) but his own ‘KMP’ – Kalla (Vice-President), Megawati (PDI-P party chair) and Paloh. After the 2014 elections, Aburizal Bakrie faced serious opposition to his position as Golkar chairman, which he had held since 2009. Golkar was now split into two factions, and Bakrie’s hold on the party became tenuous. Yet despite his media companies attacking Jokowi throughout the presidential campaign, Aburizal Bakrie was able to secure a USD 62 million loan from the new Jokowi government in December 2014, in order to pay compensation to the victims of the mudflow in East Java. After securing the loan, Bakrie softened his opposition to Jokowi.113 Golkar finally held an ‘extraordinary congress’ in which Bakrie’s close confidant Setya Novanto was elected chairperson, while a board of patrons was re-established for the first time since the Suharto era, with Bakrie moved to leader of the board. Bakrie retained considerable power to drive interparty politics.114 After his failure to achieve success with Hanura and NasDem, Hary Tanoesoedibjo decided to establish his own party in 2015, called Perindo. He claimed that in other parties ‘I could not make my decisions’ and that Hanura and NasDem ‘didn’t follow through’ with giving him a key decision-making



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role. ‘When I feel I could not be effective, I set up my own party’, he said in March 2015.115 Chairul Tanjung returned to his role as CEO of CT Corp, which allowed Trans to enter into a partnership with Turner Broadcasting to launch CNN Indonesia, and later partner with CNBC Indonesia. Yudhoyono controversially became a director of TransCorp after his presidency concluded, which led to further speculation over the possibility that Chairul would take control of Yudhoyono’s Partai Demokrat.116 In one meeting organised by party cadres to rescue the sinking political party, journalists from Chairul’s media organisation were banned, a sign at the entrance explaining they were ‘connected to Yudhoyono and his cronies’.117 Only Dahlan Iskan seems to have retired from political life.118 In mid-2015, he was under investigation from the Jakarta Prosecutor’s Office for his alleged graft during his time as head of PLN, charges amounting to USD 78.62 million.119 At the same time, the National Police announced they would question him as a witness in an allegedly bogus development project in West Kalimantan.120 In response, he claimed that he needed to break through red tape in order for the projects to go ahead.121 Given that the attorney general is from NasDem, media mogul Surya Paloh’s party, there were discussions surrounding the politicisation of the case and connections to media.122 By August 2015, the case was dropped, deemed invalid and without a legal basis, but in September the attorney general said the case would continue, and was not politically motivated.123 Overall, the first year of the Jokowi administration was embroiled in a battle over oligarchs asserting power, including media oligarchs such as Surya Paloh and Aburizal Bakrie. While it is true that these oligarchs often compete with each other over political power, all owners are successful business leaders, and as such all their media tend to report in a pro-business direction. Although it is difficult to ascertain the success of media framing of issues in terms of audience values, any observer of Indonesian media can see regular stories attributing Indonesia’s upper- and middle-class upward mobility to a pro-business mindset.124 This pro-business coverage is played out in various ways, such as negative attitudes towards pro-poor government policies which affect business profits (e.g. raising the minimum wage), and negative coverage of other anti-establishment practices such as protests and labour union campaigns. ‘Technocratic’ ministers who are seen to understand business interests within their portfolio are encouraged over politicians who might question the role of big business in contributing to rising inequality.125 At the same time, the mainstream media propagates positive images of successful businessmen as ‘self-made heroes’, including regular coverage of media oligarchs themselves, who are portrayed as pragmatic, non-ideological thinkers who have made their fortunes through private sector and successful market dominance.

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Media oligarchs who run for political office use their increased wealth as an example that their pro-business attitudes lead to improved prosperity for the common people.126 Indonesia’s understanding of business values is likely to be further co-opted to encourage capitalist policies, both via growing conglomerate control of the media and even possibly as a result of the growth of connections between digital conglomerates and private educational institutions, such as the Riady’s Pelita Harapan University, Bakrie University and various others. When it comes to regulation, the mainstream media rarely critique conglomeration, and a free regulatory environment exists surrounding mergers and acquisitions. Media dynasties A trend taking place inside Indonesia’s digital media companies is the increasingly dynastic nature of operations and decision-making. Here I follow the definition of ‘family business’ as one whose policy and direction are subject to significant influence by one or more family units, with that influence exercised through ownership and, sometimes, family participation in management.127 That Indonesia’s families own companies and appoint family members into positions of power within these companies is certainly not unusual. As Erick Thohir said, ‘If my son or daughter wants to go into the media, and my team accepts them, and they’re good [then they can join the company]. Not because I interfered. Because when I built this, I struggled. I want them to know the struggle’.128 This view would be similar across most countries and most industries. While many of Indonesia’s oligarchs who own media companies have more financially successful non-media businesses, their sons are most commonly involved in the media.129 They maintain an office in the newsrooms and hold positions of high authority within their media companies, usually with ‘digital’ somewhere in their title. Specifically, this includes Anindya and Ardi Bakrie in VisiNews Asia; John and Henry Riady in BeritaSatu; Azrul Ananda (son of Dahlan Iskan) of Jawa Pos Group and Adi and Alvin Sariaatmadja in SCTV. The exception is Surya Paloh’s son, Prananda, who has moved directly into politics and the family’s property arm, rather than in the managerial roles of Surya’s media empire.130 Hary Tanoesoedibjo’s and Chairul Tanjung’s children remain too young to be involved in their businesses, but the broad trend in the families of media oligarchs is clear. Because the media landscape is changing so rapidly, media owners generally believe that a younger person is considered more likely to understand the shifting nature of media technologies audiences. Aburizal Bakrie said of his sons: I believe Anin was a new generation, graduated from Stanford, which is very close to the telecommunications and information technology. I give ANTV,



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Lativi and Bakrie Telkom to him. . . . They [Anindya and Ardie] know more about media. They are more interested in information technology. Mining is second generation interest. My father was first [generation], me as second [generation]. Now, I believe that the third generation has to take interest in whatever has been invested by the family, even though there are professional managers there. Nowadays, both Anin and Ardi are the third generation and more in the information communications business.

Anindya Bakrie had already been given control of the fledgling ANTV and Lativi stations in 2004 because, in his words, ‘he couldn’t do any worse’.131 Anindya’s efforts did pay off to some extent – ANTV and the new, 24-hour news TVOne were making their mark in the television landscape – although financially they remained linked to the Bakrie family fortune. An astute and well-connected businessman, Anindya had the respect of his colleagues during his time in the family’s media businesses. In an interview with the author, Anindya Bakrie stressed that media would be central to the Bakrie family’s business in the future: ‘We have to be there in the media. Until I find another way to connect to homes we still want it there’.132 This is not to say this situation is inherently problematic, for either media freedom or indeed the business itself. Some studies argue that family businesses can be more socially responsible, diverse and loyal than non-family companies.133 However, when family trusts run news organisations the obvious danger is that they end up serving the interests of two groups – the family and business – and when those interests do not coincide, the family’s interests take precedence over the business – in this case a credible, non-partisan media outlet is threatened.134 The sons of oligarchs do indeed drive much of the innovation inside newsrooms. John Riady has been the main driver of BeritaSatu, and was digital media editor of The Jakarta Globe when it was first established. In Jawa Pos, Dahlan Iskan’s son Azrul Ananda, became chief editor of Jawa Pos in 2005 at the age of 27, before he moved to the position of president director in 2009. Azrul explained in 2010 that youth were the key to the company, although there were ‘with a few old heads to help out’. He said other newspapers ‘are run by over-forty year olds with the same idea of how to run a newspaper. You need young people with new ideas’.135 Dahlan Iskan confirmed in 2015 that ‘the future of the organisation will rest with Azrul’.136 Adi Sariaatmadja says the digital revolution has enabled people like him to shape the future of the media industry in ways that his father’s generation could not. He says: ‘I want to create my own baby and I don’t want to miss out. Now is the time. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t in it to make money, but my objective is also to support people for improve information and change for the next generation’.137 In most cases, these sons are well educated, sensible and innovative businessmen who work long hours and have senior staff advising them regularly.

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However, the increasing dynastic nature of the media industry in Indonesia means that family business interests can be preferred over editorial integrity. Inevitably, issues surrounding instructions to editors and journalists have become evident. During the 2014 elections, Aburizal Bakrie’s second son, Ardiani, sent an email to Chief Editors Nezar (Viva) and Uni Loebis (ANTV) complaining about campaign ads for Jokowi’s campaign in their news outlets. Ardiani wrote that if they did not support the family business they should resign.138 Patria and Loebis subsequently did resign, citing concerns around the influence of ownership on content. In 2015, Patria explains his departure in this way: Credibility is an asset to a media outlet. So when I work with the media where the owner tries to destroy the credibility, it affects me personally. I must decide whether to stay or leave. Tension between the owners and journalists was getting worse and political bias was there. The media was being used to attack adversaries.139

As John Riady has moved to e-commerce venture MatahariMall, his younger brother Henry became a director and was more active in the newsrooms of BeritaSatu. His involvement coincided with a number of high-level resignations around the future direction of the media company. Inside Jawa Pos, journalists complained that Azrul Ananda instructed them to back off on certain stories. One journalist said, ‘He [Azrul Ananda] has a very direct style. He said we cannot write like this because we have to take into account the interests of the owner’.140 Aburizal Bakrie’s explanation sheds some light on the importance of digital communications as a central aspect of his family’s business. He could have placed his sons in positions in his resources companies but chose not to. These sons may indeed be ‘cutting their teeth’ in a less profitable business of the media, where failure will not ruin their family business wealth as it would in banking, resources or other industries. Or it could be that these oligarchs are embracing digital technologies because they see them as central to future wealth and political power. As to the influence of owners on political coverage, much would depend on the situation of each media owner’s business portfolio. Either way, the increasingly dynastic way in which these digital conglomerates are managed exerts more pressure on media practitioners to toe the line of the family business. CONCLUSION My research on media ownership in Indonesia has presented three main arguments regarding media and politics in the digital era. First, media owners are more active on the political stage and are more likely to influence coverage



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of politics and elections. Second, media owners have greater wealth than they did prior to the digital era. Owning a digital media conglomerate is not the sole reason for these owners’ political or financial successes, but it has been beneficial. Third, media companies are more dynastic. Media ownership power, increased conglomeration and the increasingly dynastic way in which these companies are managed have exacerbated partisan news coverage. This predicament has significant consequences for a diverse, impartial and informative media landscape in one the world’s largest democracies. At the same time, Indonesia’s media organisations have continued to report regularly on corruption and political mismanagement, and media companies do regularly cover the political machinations of their competitors. As we have noted, this is not a cartel where media owners regularly pursue the same goal. In this multi-oligarchic media system, those Indonesians who consume a vast array of media content from a variety of sources are able to stay abreast of some of the machinations of media oligarchs, if not always presented in the most complete or balanced way. For example, Dahlan Iskan’s media regularly covered Aburizal Bakrie’s company’s involvement in the East Java mudflow disaster; Bakrie’s companies produced an exposé on Surya Paloh’s companies in Africa and his connections with President Jokowi; Surya Paloh’s media covered Dahlan Iskan’s corruption trial and so on. Thus, where a multi-oligarchic media landscape exists, there is plenty of information in the public sphere for the media consumer concerned with access to a range of news outlets. Unlike other countries in Southeast Asia where there is strong control by government or political elites, most political topics in Indonesia are covered somewhere at some point by some organisation. However, as Jeffrey Winters argues, because the media companies are ‘owned by oligarchs and used extensively in oligarchic battles’, it therefore allows them to ‘dismiss accusations as being purely political’.141 Therefore, it is in an oligarch’s interest to own media companies, attack each other through their news outlets and, when they are accused of corruption or mismanagement, argue that the coverage was conducted purely for political reasons. They then support each other when there is mutual benefit, such as arguing for weaker laws on cross-media ownership. Furthermore, the often-repeated line from media companies – that they should be free to run whatever agenda they like and let the consumer decide which media they trust – does not seem to suffice. Not everyone has access to all platforms (Indonesia’s internet penetration is only around a third of the adult population), nor can they necessarily identify and critique media ownership bias. That TVOne had the largest audience on the election night is one indicator that viewers do not switch from media that provide unreliable reporting. In the wake of the ‘Brexit’ vote in the United Kingdom and Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 US election, the term ‘post-truth politics’ has

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become popularised (‘post-truth’ was named Oxford Dictionaries’ ‘word of the year’ in 2016).142 The term refers to politics becoming more adversarial and dominated by television performances which appeal to voter emotions rather than facts.143 Social media also play a significant role in the spreading of misinformation and ‘fake news’, and are central to a ‘post-truth’ media environment. Yet to return to the example provided at the start of this chapter, where a national television station declared the losing candidate as victor, Indonesia’s ‘post-truth’ media environment has been steadily constructed over a ten-year period whereby oligarchs shape coverage and encourage popular sentiment over policy and facts. The themes and arguments presented in this chapter of concentration, conglomeration and partisan media coverage are crucial aspects of the transformations caused by the digital revolution. But this does not mean oligarchic messages propagated through the mainstream digital conglomerates cannot be countered. In the next chapter we examine the ways in which digitalisation has allowed for more ‘participatory’ forms of media in areas where internet access is widespread, and where young, tech-savvy Indonesians are using digital media to challenge the power of oligarchs and bring about significant social and political changes. In this regard, subsequent chapters in this book argue, somewhat ironically, that the best avenue in countering the oligarchic effects of digitalisation of media content is, in fact, digital media platforms. NOTES 1. Jonathan Hardy, The Political Economy of the Media: An Introduction (Routledge, London, 2014), 99. 2. Richard Robison and Vedi Hadiz, Reorganising Power in Indonesia: The Politics of Oligarchy in an Age of Markets (RoutledgeCurzon, London, 2004), 5. 3. Vedi Hadiz and Richard Robison, ‘The Political Economy of Oligarchy’, Indonesia 96 (2013) 35. 4. Jeffrey Winters, Oligarchy (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2011). 5. Jeffrey Winters, ‘Oligarchy and Democracy in Indonesia’, Indonesia, 96 (2013), 7. 6. Ibid., 7–8. 7. Ibid., 26. In Oligarchy (p. 156) Winters writes, ‘the threats oligarchs have faced since the collapse of Suharto’s regime have been entirely from each other and from figures within the state’ (not from ‘the state’). 8. Robert McChesney’s work on media oligarchs stands out here, The Political Economy of the Media – Enduring Issues, Emerging Dilemmas (Monthly Review Press, New York, 2008). For a brief summary of arguments in the pre-internet era, see Pamela Shoemaker and Stephen Reese, Mediating the Message: Theories of Influences on Mass Media Content (Longman, Michigan, 1996), 160–169. 9. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, personal interview, Canberra, April 2016.



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10. See David T. Hill, The Press in New Order Indonesia (UWA Press, Perth, 1994), 92–93. 11. Ignatius Haryanto, ‘Media Ownership and Its Implications’, in Krishna Sen and David T. Hill (eds.), Politics and the Media in Twenty-First Century Indonesia (Routledge, London, 2011), 111. 12. Andreas Harsono, ‘Wartawan atau Politikus’, Pikiran Rakyat, 7 June 2004. 13. Stephen Fitzpatrick, ‘Business Going Crook for Indonesia’s Richest Man’, The Australian, 19 November 2008, accessed 12 May 2015, http://www.theaustralian. com.au/archive/news/business-going-crook-for-richest-man/story-e6frg6t61111118074125. 14. Greg Fealy, ‘The Politics of Yudhoyono: Majoritarian Democracy, Insecurity and Vanity’, in Edward Aspinall, Marcus Mietzner and Dirk Tomsa (eds.), The Yudhoyono Years: Decade of Stability and Stagnation (ISEAS, Singapore, 2014), 45. 15. Forbes magazine, ‘Indonesia’s 40 Richest’, 13 December 2007, accessed 14 March 2015, http://www.forbes.com/2007/12/13/richest-indonesian-billionairesbiz-07indonesia-cz_jd_1213indonesia_land.html. 16. Thomas Hanitzsch and Dedy Hidayat, ‘Journalists in Indonesia’, in David Weaver and Lars Willnot (eds.), The Global Journalist in the 21st Century (Routledge, New York and London, 2012), 42. 17. Aburizal Bakrie, personal interview, Jakarta, November 2015. 18. Schiller, J., Lucas, A. and Susistiyanto, P., Learning from the East Java Mudflow: Disaster Politics in Indonesia, Indonesia 85 (2008), 51–70. 19. Ross Tapsell, ‘Politics and the Press in Indonesia: Aburizal Bakrie, the Lapindo Mudflow and the Surabaya post’, Media Asia 39, 2 (2012), 109–116. 20. For example, Mulyani had opposed Bakrie’s call for the closure of the Indonesian Stock Exchange (IDX) to halt a nosedive in shares of Bumi Resources, partly owned by the Bakrie Group. See ‘Golkar bantah dongkel Sri Mulyani’ (Golkar denies ousting Sri Mulyani) Koran Tempo, 19 January 2010, cited in Aspinall, Mietzner and Tomsa (eds.), The Yudhoyono Years, 8. 21. Hal Hill, ‘The Indonesian Economy during the Yudhoyono Decade’, in Aspinall, Mietzner and Tomsa (eds.), The Yudhoyono Years, 285. 22. Fitzpatrick, ‘Business Going Crook for Indonesia’s Richest Man’. 23. Rachma Ida, ‘Reorganisation of Media Power in Indonesia’, in Krishna Sen and David T. Hill (eds.), Politics and the Media in Twenty-First Century Indonesia (Routledge, 2011), 20. 24. Dahlan Iskan, personal interview, Jakarta, April 2015. 25. The author spent two months based in Surabaya and visited the Jawa Pos newsroom regularly. 26. Anonymous interview with Jawa Pos journalist, February 2010. 27. Birgit Braeuchler, ‘Transformation of the Media Scene in the Moluccas’, in Hill and Sen (eds.), Politics and the Media in Twenty-First Century Indonesia, 132. 28. See David Hill’s account of TVRI in Manado, South Sulawesi, ‘Media and Politics in Regional Indonesia’, in Krishna Sen and Terence Lee (eds.), Political Regimes and the Media in Asia (Routledge, London, 2008), 193. 29. Dahlan Iskan, personal interview, Jakarta, 2015.

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30. Tifatul Sembiring, personal interview, Jakarta, April 2015. 31. Tapsell, ‘Old Tricks in a New Era’, 236. 32. Rachma Ida, ‘Reorganisation of Media Power in Indonesia’, 14–15. 33. Ibid. 34. ‘SBY Dibabarkan jadi petinggi Trans Corp’, Rappler.com, 15 February 2015, accessed 19 June 2016, http://www.rappler.com/world/regions/asia-pacific/indo nesia/83986-sby-dikabarkan-jadi-direktur-internasional-ctcorp. 35. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, personal interview, Canberra, April 2016. 36. Riady and Clinton had a long association, the pair having met when in Arkansas in 1983 when Clinton was governor and Riady family was investing in banking in the state. Richard Borsuk and Nancy Chng, Liem Sioe Liong’s Salim Group: The Business Pillar of Suharto’s Indonesia, ISEAS, 2014, 220. 37. Ibid., 15. See also Christian Chua, Chinese Big Business in Indonesia: the State of Capital (Routledge, 2008). 38. Ramadhan Pohan, personal interview, Jakarta, March 2010. 39. Ross Tapsell, ‘Old Tricks in a New Era: The Enduring Practice of SelfCensorship in Indonesian Journalism’, Asian Studies Review 36, 2 (2012), 227–245. 40. World Values Survey data 2005–2009 available at worldvaluessurvey.org. I took inspiration from Atul Kohli, Poverty amid Plenty in the New India (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2012), 51, for this section and in examining the world values survey. 41. Adam Schmidt, ‘Indonesia’s 2009 Elections: Performance Challenges and Negative Precedents’, in Edward Aspinall and Marcus Mietzner (eds.), Problems of Democratisation in Indonesia: Elections, Institutions and Society, ISEAS, Singapore, 2010, 111. 42. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, personal interview, Canberra, April 2016. 43. Azrul Ananda, personal interview, Surabaya, February 2010. 44. Nezar Patria, personal interview, Jakarta, December 2009. 45. Linn Neumann, personal interview, Jakarta, March 2010. 46. Tapsell, ‘Old Tricks in a New Era’. 47. Harso Kurniawan, ‘Yudhoyono Dispatches Chairul Tanjung to South Korea to Strengthen Ties’, The Jakarta Globe, 24 May 2013, accessed 12 May 2016, http://jakartaglobe.beritasatu.com/business/Yudhoyono-dispatches-chairul-tanjungto-south-korea-to-strengthen-ties/. 48. ‘Beda Sukarno dan Yudhoyono saat hadapi media’, Merdeka.com, 11 March 2014, accessed 12 May 2016, http://www.merdeka.com/khas/beda-soekarno-dan-Yudho yono-saat-hadapi-media-kolom-selasa.html. 49. Dahlan Iskan, personal interview. 50. See also Kompas Penerbit Buku website, accessed 12 March 2016, http://buku. kompas.com/Produk/Buku/Technical/The-Extraordinary-Story-of-Chairul-Tanjung,Indone.aspx. 51. ‘Indonesia’s 40 Richest’, Forbes, December 2011. 52. ‘Chairul Transforms Business Empire, Eyes Expansion’, The Jakarta Post, 2 December 2011, accessed 12 May 2016, http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2011/ 12/02/chairul-transforms-business-empire-eyes-expansion.html.



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53. His wealth was estimated at below $1 billion in 2012. See ‘Bakrie out of Rich Men’s Club’, The Jakarta Post, 10 November 2012. 54. Mietzner, ‘Oligarchs, Politicians, and Activists’, 109. 55. Aburizal Bakrie, personal interview, Jakarta, April 2015. 56. Suar Hutabarat, personal interview, Jakarta, April 2010. 57. Lisa Luhur-Schad, personal interview, Jakarta, April 2010. 58. Putra is the son of Panda Nababan, who was once deputy general editor of Surya Paloh’s Prioritas. 59. Prisca Niken, personal interview, Jakarta, January 2014. 60. Hary Tanoesoedibjo, personal interview, Jakarta, March 2015. 61. Ibid. 62. Erwida Maulia and Dicky Christanto, ‘Yudhoyono Takes Offense at Protesting Buffalo’, The Jakarta Post, 3 February 2010, accessed 20 January 2015, http://www. thejakartapost.com/news/2010/02/03/Yudhoyono-takes-offense-protesting-buffalo. html. 63. Mietzner, ‘Jokowi: Rise of a Polite Populist’. 64. Greg Fealy, ‘The Politics of Yudyohono: Majoritarian Democracy, Insecurity and Vanity’, in Aspinall, Mietzner and Tomsa (eds.), The Yudhoyono Years, ISEAS, 2015, p. 47. 65. Marcus Mietzner, ‘Jokowi: Rise of a Polite Populist’, Inside Indonesia 116 (2014), accessed 12 May 2016, http://www.insideindonesia.org/jokowi-rise-of-apolite-populist. 66. Greg Fealy, ‘Indonesian Politics in 2011: Democratic Regression and Yudho­ yono’s Regal Incumbency’, Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies 47, 3 (2011), 334. 67. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, personal interview, Canberra, April 2016. 68. Ibid. 69. Aburizal Bakrie, personal interview. 70. Dahlan Iskan, personal interview. 71. Fealy, ‘The Politics of Yudyohono’, 50. 72. ‘Yudhoyono Wanted Media to Be Fair ahead of Election’ The Jakarta Post, 2 December 2013, accessed 2 May 2016, http://www.thejakartapost.com/ news/2013/02/12/Yudhoyono-wants-media-be-fair-ahead-election.html. 73. Rachma Ida, ‘Reorganisation of Media Power in Indonesia’, 15. 74. ‘2015 Indonesia’s 50 Richest’, Forbes, accessed 12 March 2016, http://www. forbes.com/indonesia-billionaires/#13d44fcdc85c. 75. Erick Thohir, personal interview, Jakarta, December 2015. 76. In 2012, the rise of Jakarta vice-governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama or ‘Ahok’ and the increased role of Hary Tanoesoedibjo have these two pioneer greater Chinese Indonesian influence. 77. Polling obtained from Indikator Politik’s Burhannudin Muhtadi, Canberra, 23 May 2016. 78. Aspinall, ‘Oligarchic Populist’. 79. Joko Widodo, personal interview, Jakarta, January 2014. 80. Putra Nababan, personal interview, Jakarta, February 2014.

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81. ‘Sukutu Baru Teuku Umar’, Tempo Online, 7 April 2014, accessed 4 August 2014, http://majalah.tempo.co/konten/2014/04/07/LU/145077/Sekutu-Baru-TeukuUmar/06/43. 82. ‘KPI Says MetroTV Gives NasDem Too Much Airtime’, The Jakarta Post, 18 March 2014, http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2014/03/18/kpi-says-metro-tvgives-nasdem-too-much-airtime.html, accessed 12 May 2016. 83. Suryapratama, personal interview, Jakarta, April 2015. 84. Open Society Foundations Report, ‘Mapping Digital Media in Indonesia’, 2012, accessed April 2016, 32, https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/reports/ mapping-digital-media-indonesia. 85. The PPP also joined. 86. Aburizal Bakrie, personal interview, Jakarta, 2015. 87. ‘Setelah Pintu Tertutup di Teuku Umar’, Tempo, 25 May 2014, 33–36. As Cited in Aspinall, ‘Oligarchic Populism’, 24. 88. Fadli Zon, personal interview, Jakarta, March 2015. 89. Tanoesoedibjo, personal interview. 90. ‘Editorial: Endorsing Jokowi’, The Jakarta Post, 4 July 2014, accessed 2 May 2016, http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2014/07/04/editorial-endorsingjokowi.html. 91. Sita Dewi and Yuliasri Perdani, ‘Jokowi vs Prabowo: 1–0’, The Jakarta Post, 10 June 2014, accessed 14 May 2016, http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2014/06/ 10/jokowi-vs-prabowo-1-0.html. 92. See ‘Winning Signs’, Tempo, 14–20 July 2014. 93. Liam Gammon, ‘Prabowo’s Dog Whistling’, New Mandala, 12 June 2014, accessed 12 May 2016, http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/newmandala/2014/06/12/ prabowos-dog-whistling/. 94. ‘Prabowo Merasa Diperlakukan Tidak Adil Oleh Media’, Pos Kota, 9 July 2014, accessed 12 May 2016, http://poskotanews.com/2014/07/09/prabowo-merasadiperlakukan-tidak-adil-oleh-media/. 95. Aspinall, ‘Oligarchic Populism’, 24. 96. Ben Bland, ‘Indonesia Media Barons Line up for Election Fight’, Financial Times, 5 June 2014, accessed 12 May 2016, http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/ s/0/048a7812-ebca-11e3-8cef-00144feabdc0.html?siteedition=intl#axzz48Jfa2sFj. 97. See Marcus Mietzner, ‘Reinventing Asian Populism: Jokowi’s Rise, Democracy, and Political Contestation in Indonesia’, Policy Studies 72 (2015). See also ‘The World’s Third Biggest Democracy Is in Political Limbo’, Time, 10 July 2014, accessed 26 November 2016, http://time.com/2970051/indonesia-election-limbo/. 98. Marcus Mietzner, ‘Indonesia’s 2014 Elections: How Jokowi Won and Democracy Survived’, Journal of Democracy 25, 4 (2014), 111–125. 99. Art Silverblatt et al., Media Literacy: Keys to Interpreting Media Messages, Praeger Frederick, London, 2008, 3. 100. Dahlan Iskan, personal interview. 101. Suryapratama, personal interview. 102. Aburizal Bakrie, personal interview. 103. Tanoesoedibjo, personal interview.



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104. Joko Widodo, personal interview. 105. Indikator Politik Nasional Survei, January 2014. 106. Saiful Mujani SMRC polling data, July 2014. 107. ‘150 Richest Indonesians’, The Jakarta Globe, 1 June 2013, accessed 11 May 2016, http://thejakartaglobe.beritasatu.com/archive/150-richest-indonesians-5/. 108. Ulisari Eslita, ‘Going Digital’, Forbes, 3 December 2012, 54. 109. Mietzner, ‘Reinventing Asian Populism’, 52. 110. See ‘Dalam bayang-bayang Paloh’, Tempo, 24–30 November 2014. 111. Antara, ‘PDI-P, NasDem Wish to Build Strong Government’, 12 April 2014, accessed 11 April 2016, http://www.antaranews.com/en/news/93627/pdip-nasdemwish-to-build-strong-government-jokowi. 112. Burhanuddin Muhtadi, ‘Jokowi’s First Year: A Weak President Caught between Reform and Oligarchic Politics’, Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies 51 (3), 2015, 363. 113. Mietzner, ‘Reinventing Asian Populism’, 58. Law 3/2015 on the State Budget Amendment requires the government to allocate a loan to compensation for the victims. 114. Arya Budi, ‘Golkar Party and the Survival of Oligarchy’, The Jakarta Post, 19 May 2016, accessed 28 May 2016, http://www.thejakartapost.com/academia/ 2016/05/19/golkar-party-and-the-survival-of-oligarchy.html. 115. Tanoesoedibjo, personal interview. 116. ‘Yudhoyono dikabarkan jadi petinggi Trans Corp’, Rappler.com, 16 February 2015, accessed 12 May 2016, http://www.rappler.com/world/regions/asia-pacific/ indonesia/83986-Yudhoyono-dikabarkan-jadi-direktur-internasional-ctcorp. 117. ‘Wartawan Trans Corp Dilarang Masuk Acara Kader Demokrat Penentang Yudhoyono’, Kompas.com, 30 April 2015, accessed 12 April 2016, http://nasional. kompas.com/read/2015/04/30/14133161/Wartawan.Trans.Corp.Dilarang.Masuk. Acara.Kader.Demokrat.Penentang.YUDHOYONO. 118. Dahlan Iskan, personal interview. 119. ‘Dahlan Iskan Wins Pretrial Ruling’, The Jakarta Post, 4 August 2015, accessed 12 May 2016, http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2015/08/04/dahlan-iskan-winspretrial-ruling.html. 120. Haeril Halim, ‘Prosecutors Grill Dahlan Iskan for Graft’, The Jakarta Post, 5 June 2015, accessed 12 May 2016, http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2015/06/ 05/prosecutors-grill-dahlan-iskan-graft.html. 121. Deny Irwanto, ‘Ini Alasan Dahlan Iskan Kerap Terobos Peraturan Saat Jadi Dirut PLN’, Metrotvnews.com, 6 June 2015, accessed 12 May 2016, http://news. metrotvnews.com/read/2015/06/06/133510/ini-alasan-dahlan-iskan-kerap-terobosperaturan-saat-jadi-dirut-pln. 122. ‘Attorney General: No Politicization in Dahlan’s Case’, Tempo.co, 17 June 2015, accessed 12 May 2016, http://en.tempo.co/read/news/2015/06/17/055675916/ Attorney-General-No-Politicization-in-Dahlans-Case. 123. ‘Jaksa Agung: Penanganan Perkara Korupsi Baik bagi Masyarakat’, Beritasatu. com, September 2015, accessed 12 May 2016, http://www.beritasatu.com/nasional/ 305078-jaksa-agung-penanganan-perkara-korupsi-baik-bagi-masyarakat.html.

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124. This has been observed also in India. See Atul Kohli, Poverty amid Plenty in the New India (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2012), 51. 125. Bakrie’s media coverage of Sri Mulyani has been discussed earlier in this chapter. Another example would be Minister for Communications Rudiantara, who was seen as a good choice by media oligarchs because of his industry experience in the telecommunications sector during a time of heavy business concentration. 126. For an example of this type of content, see ‘Surya Paloh: Lifetime Achievement’, Men’s Obsession: Inspiring for Life 3 (2015), 62–68. 127. Peter Davis, ‘Realizing the Potential of the Family Business’, Organizational Dynamics 12 1, 1983, 47–56. 128. Titiana Veda, ‘Indonesian Media Manager a Man on a Mission’, The Jakarta Globe, 22 July 2009, accessed 12 May 2016, http://www.webcitation.org/64czge90q. 129. Neither Aburizal Bakrie nor Surya Paloh has daughters. James Riady’s daughters, Stephanie and Caroline, seem to be less involved in the media. Stephanie Riady did a brief stint in Jakarta Globe and is editor in chief of BeritaSatu’s Campus Life Magazine but has moved more into education industry. 130. See ‘Profil Prananda Paloh’, accessed 12 August 2016, http://pranandapaloh. info/profil/. 131. Anindya Bakrie, personal interview, Jakarta, March 2015. 132. Ibid. 133. Ellis cites studies by Standard and Poor’s research of 500 firms over a ten-year period, as well as a Harvard 2012 study. Gavin Ellis, The Future of News: Media Moguls and White Knights (Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2014), 100–101. 134. Ibid. 135. Azrul Ananda, personal interview, Surabaya, February 2010. 136. Dahlan Iskan, personal interview. 137. Adi Sariaatmadja, personal interview, Jakarta, November 2015. 138. See ‘Dimarahi Ardi Bakrie, Pemred dan Weapemred Viva.co.id mengundurkan diri’, Kompasiana, 17 April 2014, accessed 1 March 2016, http://www.kompasiana. com/monicacaroline/dimarahi-ardi-bakrie-pemred-dan-wapemred-viva-co-id-mengun durkan-diri_54f79974a33311fe7a8b48a1. 139. Nezar Patria, personal interview, Jakarta, February 2015. 140. Ibid., 238. 141. Winters, Oligarchy, 184. 142. Kara Fox, ‘Post-Truth Named Word of the Year by Oxford Dictionaries’, CNN, 16 November 2016, accessed 1 December 2016, http://edition.cnn.com/2016/11/16/ world/word-of-the-year-post-truth-oxford/. 143. William Davies, ‘The Age of Post-Truth Politics’, New York Times, 24 August 2016, accessed 1 November 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/24/opinion/ campaign-stops/the-age-of-post-truth-politics.html?_r=0.

Chapter 4

Counter-oligarchic media

With both presidential candidates claiming victory in 2014, and suggestions that the election result might have been manipulated, an air of uncertainty permeated Indonesia. On 10 July 2014, a group of netizens decided to crowdsource voting tabulation around the country. The three founders, who were based in three different continents, conceived the idea through a Facebook chat group. It was not completely original. In 2013, Kenya’s crowdsourcing project ‘Ushahidi’ (meaning ‘witness’ in Swahili) was used to ensure citizens could provide ‘a channel for citizens to be part of protecting their vote and their electoral process’.1 But Ushahidi site had been created in 2008, five years before their election. Indonesians needed a site to be set up instantly in order to address the immediate post-election confusion. The three netizens realised that the forms from 478,000 voting booths were being uploaded to the internet, and decided to create Kawal Pemilu (Guard the Elections), a site which allows for collective data entry of results. They needed 1,000 volunteers to finish counting within five days, in order to declare their findings before the official result. The site was assembled on 12 July, only two days after the idea had been conceived, with a total budget of USD 54. Results were linked to a Facebook page that updated every ten minutes, where citizens could choose to view results by region, polling station or candidate.2 By the fifth day, they had digitised 97% of the scanned forms, which established that Jokowi won. An open data report concluded that Kawal Pemilu ‘helped settle the elections, legitimize the winner and, more generally, ensure a peaceful transfer of power in Indonesia’.3 The previous two chapters of this book have argued that a far-reaching implication of the digital revolution is the increased power of digital conglomerates and media oligarchs. This chapter explains how digital technologies can empower individual citizens, who in turn affect news and information 95

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gathering and dissemination. In this regard, digital media are used individually and collectively by citizens to counter, usurp or undermine predominant oligarchic mainstream media content. In the opening chapter of this book we heard of Indonesians’ increasingly ubiquitous use of social media platforms, and why it is crucial to examine Indonesia in order to understand the impact of new media technologies. Indonesia has even been declared a ‘social media democracy’, given its mass collaboration of individuals and groups via new media platforms.4 This research fits into broader global literature on the changing nature of participatory media.5 The digital revolution has brought about enormous adaptations in the ways media are produced and consumed. Digital media are more easily ‘manipulated or copied, and is transferable between different sources, objects and means of technological delivery’,6 and as such they create a closer relationship between producers, distributors and consumers, and allow for greater individual engagement in determining news content. A number of terms are adopted by scholars to describe the changing nature of production and consumption of digital media. Axel Bruns described the rise of the ‘prod-user’ – the media user who produces content as well as consumes it,7 driven by user-led content creation that takes place in a variety of online spheres, but is heightened with the rise of new, digital platforms. Another term is ‘user-generated content’ which ‘blurs the borders between professionals and amateurs in a new digital environment’.8 The term ‘citizen journalism’ is discussed and debated widely as new platforms allow for non-journalists to produce and disseminate information. A leading scholar in the field, Manuel Castells uses the term ‘mass self-communication’ which ‘provides the technological platform for the construction of the autonomy of the social actor, be it individual or collective, vis-à-vis the institutions of society’.9 US scholar Henry Jenkins has stressed the importance of ‘spreadability’ of media content via new platforms, arguing that increasingly in the digital media era, ‘if it doesn’t spread, it’s dead’.10 The rise of a younger generation of ‘digital natives’11 encourages scholars to highlight the importance of digital media tools in influencing social movements and political change. Castells, for example, argues that ‘citizens of the Information Age’ are able to ‘subvert the practice of communication as usual by occupying the medium and creating the message’.12 Becoming a ‘digital citizen’, then, is more than just ‘participating’ online but instead involves subversive online acts such as (but not limited to) petitioning, posting and blogging.13 These new media platforms can assist in democratisation. The so-called ‘social media revolutions’ such as the Arab Spring excited many scholars, pundits and pro-democracy advocates alike. Similarly, the role of new media in Asia is often discussed in the context of authoritarian rule (e.g. China) or



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semi-authoritarian regimes (e.g. in Malaysia and Thailand) and how these regimes are threatened by a more vociferous public sphere enabled by new media platforms. In these regimes, the state retains crucial influence on the development of new media platforms and how they are used. In Indonesia, understanding the reformist messages propagated through digital media requires us to examine citizens’ ability to confront non-state elite actors. This chapter argues that the term ‘counter-oligarchic media’ is central to understanding the way in which an empowered minority of Indonesians with internet access are shaping media and politics in the digital era. Counter-oligarchic media exist when digital platforms are used to contradict or usurp the dominant discourse of media oligarchs. These can be independent digital platform creations but also movements which promote reform within larger digital conglomerates owned by oligarchs. Here it is important to distinguish between ‘non-oligarchic media’: which is any media company or platform which is not owned or controlled by the digital conglomerates (e.g. an independent online news website); as opposed to initiatives through digital media which are utilised to be specifically counter-oligarchic. One might argue that simply by existing in the news media marketplace, non-oligarchic sites such as Rappler, owned by former CNN journalist Maria Reza, are inherently countering dominant orthodoxy of digital conglomerates, but as this chapter explains, it is counter-oligarchic media which have been most pro-active in bringing about reforms and significant change in Indonesia. Of course, the importance of sites such as Rappler and others may vary, but as chapter three has argued, it is likely that many of these sites will either be bought by a digital conglomerate or fail to be financially sustainable in the Indonesian media landscape. As mentioned previously in this book, a strand of scholarship which questions the oligarchy thesis focuses on the process of Indonesia’s democratic transition ‘from below’, through ‘power, class, political agency, and influence’.14 This group of scholars are categorised as the ‘pluralist’ school, whereby post-authoritarian Indonesia is witnessing an ‘incessant contest between predatory and counter-oligarchic forces’.15 Edward Aspinall argues that a key avenue for lower-class influence in politics is ‘electoral populism’, based on his observations that, since 2005, ‘a near revolutionary shift in the nature of Indonesian politics has taken place’. While emphasising the complexity and contestation of oligarchic powers and subordinate groups, Aspinall points to the influence of ‘popular forces in Indonesian politics’ as evidence that the power and influence of oligarchy should be regularly questioned. By examining the power and influence of alternative forces in a ‘more compelling and empirically satisfying manner’16, this chapter provides further insight into the way oligarchic power is used and contested, as encouraged by scholarly critiques of oligarchy theory.

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Examining counter-oligarchic media enables us to better understand the role of participatory media in shaping Indonesian society. As Graber argued in 2005, media studies research can seem ‘like a beam of a searchlight that moves restlessly about, bringing one episode and then another out of the darkness into vision’.17 Indeed, the interdisciplinary nature of media studies does allow it to enter into various fields of study. At the same time, the ‘restless’ nature of media studies often produces a rather episodic field. As leading media studies Professor Todd Gitlin wrote when he reflected upon his own work in Media Unlimited: I wrote dozens upon dozens of articles on media subjects: happy-talk news, Ronald Reagan and the so-called Teflon effect, sound bites and politics, the treatment of campaigns as horse races, TV’s description of the Cold War. . . . Each time, I started with a subject of some currency and hoped to see it as part of a whole field. Except: Where was that whole field?

Similar questions could be asked about new media scholarship in Indonesia. In case study after case study, scholars and students produce findings from research on a particular issue which ‘went viral’ on social media, and before too long the field has moved on to the next event or online movement. Case studies are of course important but need to be linked together to assist in the development of the field of new media research in order to understand the impact of new digital technologies. Perhaps, as Castells wrote in 2012, it is ‘too early to construct a systematic, scholarly interpretation’ of these new networked social movements,18 and in many ways this remains true today in Indonesia. Much like Indonesia’s democracy, counter-oligarchic media remain a rambunctious, disorderly, ever-changing phenomenon. In this chapter, I aim to show how it is crucial for any examination of recent trends in Indonesian media, politics and society to look at digital technologies as potential agents of change. No longer the sole domain of programmers and internet geeks, digital media have quickly become a predominant avenue for younger Indonesians with internet access to push for reforms. An empowered minority of citizens dominate this space, but the digital media landscape has also been utilised by grass-roots, civil society movements to influence the industrial media and oligarchic forces prevalent in Indonesian politics. What type of political agency is emerging from the use of digital media? This question matters because it gives a sense of the character of citizenship these young urban Indonesians are creating. What types of struggles are they engaged in? Which political battles do they take on? Are they fleeting or sustained? Are they building strong collective movements or strategic yet temporary alliances? In this chapter I answer these questions by tracing a



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short history of counter-oligarchic media in Indonesia, arguing that for the most part the battles are constructed by collectivist action through a range of digital media platforms. I argue that counter-oligarchic campaigns do not always win, but that they do take on battles against powerful elite political decision-making. As we shall see, counter-oligarchic forces are often fleeting in topics or ‘moments’, but seen over a longer period a more sustained presence of digital media activism is clear. COUNTER-OLIGARCHIC MEDIA: EARLY ORIGINS This section charts the rise of new media platforms and their usage in Indonesia. As chapter two explained, the introduction of various media technologies to Indonesia has played a prominent role in transforming Indonesian society and politics. The rise of more participatory new media content via personalised online platforms has a much shorter history. The origin of increasingly ubiquitous and nationwide social media usage in Indonesia really begins with Facebook. As with most social media sites in Indonesia, Facebook became popular via urban youth (mostly Jakartans) in 2007, a year after it was established in the United States. The site became so popular that within a few years many Indonesians maintained numerous Facebook pages, adding ‘Friends’ whom they had never met. Indonesians wrote openly and frequently about themselves, each other, food, love, religion, death and politics. As the daily commute to work in major cities became longer and more arduous, social media allowed commuters to pass the endless hours commuting to and from work.19 By 2009, Facebook had over 12 million users, and quickly became one of the most visited websites in Indonesia.20 Many scholars, pundits and old-school journalists were sceptical of the role Facebook was playing in Indonesia. Andrew Keen reflects the view of many Indonesians when he writes of social media sites such as Facebook that: ‘Rather than fostering a renaissance, it has created a selfie-centered culture of voyeurism and narcissism’.21 Media organisations also initially ignored what was happening on social media platforms, seeing them as the domain of mundane chats between friends. For example, Twitter was often chastised by critics as a medium where people posted ‘what they had for breakfast’.22 But social media sites soon gained credibility because of the impact they could have in usurping previously censored messages. When state-owned mainstream media was unable to report popular uprisings in countries involved in the Arab Spring, citizens took to Twitter to report on rallies and protests, and to plan and advertise future protests on Facebook. It showed how new media platforms could usurp mainstream media news production,

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and in fact could be emancipatory. Sensing its important role in delivering up-to-the-minute breaking news, in 2009 Twitter changed its generic question from ‘What are you doing?’ to ‘What’s happening?’ This positioned the site to be more related to the realm of citizen-produced news. Soon, journalists began live-tweeting from the scene of an event, and news sites updated details on their Facebook pages. In Indonesia, social media’s activist potential was first heralded through the case of Prita Mulyasari. A mother of two, Prita Mulyasari was prosecuted for libel when she complained via email to friends about the service at a private hospital in 2008. A ‘Coins for Prita’ Facebook page campaign pleaded for donations to her in order to pay her court-imposed fine, and many other sites popped up, including YouTube videos. Upon appeal, in late December 2009 a court found Prita not guilty, but the collection of money for her was so successful and far exceeded the fine.23 One of the few early scholarly analyses to discuss the impact of social media sites in Indonesia was Merlyna Lim’s 2013 article which focuses on Prita Mulyasari and other similar cases.24 Despite Lim arguing that social media activism in Indonesia provided ‘many clicks but few sticks’,25 Prita’s story became the go-to example for Indonesian pundits, graduate students and politicians alike as evidence of social media’s (and Facebook in particular) definitive impact.26 Ten years on, the Prita Mulyasari case remains largely an anomaly. Predictions that Facebook could assist with the plight of individual citizens unfairly treated by powerful forces who were otherwise operating with impunity in Indonesia have not become a regularity. Instead, as Lim argued, the larger, more compelling implications of the Prita Mulyasari case was the way in which social media sites became an avenue for mainstream media content. The ‘Coins for Prita’ case was one of the first in Indonesia where the story was circulated so widely on social media pages that it became mainstream news, and showed that if a cause receives enough traction on social media, it can enter the 24-hour mainstream news cycle. Constant mainstream media reportage, rather than social media advocacy, most likely led to the change in policy surrounding Prita’s case.27 As such, the case was nevertheless a warning to elites and authorities that the media landscape was shifting. Indonesians were increasingly choosing to express their disappointment via online and social media, and they could cause change, particularly if the mainstream media took notice. Facebook’s potential as a counter-oligarchic force was more evident in the cicak vs buaya case, also in 2008. Here, the small cicak (gecko) was the Corruption Eradication Commission (or KPK) up against might of the notoriously corrupt police, represented as the buaya (crocodile). A furore erupted when the police arrested two KPK officials, Chandra Hamzah and Bibit Samad Riyanto. In this case, the story was initially driven by mainstream



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media platforms, but citizens turned to social media to encourage greater criticism of the police. One such Facebook page included Gerakan 1.000,000 Facebookers Dukung Chandra Hamzah & Bibit Samad Riyanto (Movement of 1,000,000 Facebookers Supporting Chandra Hamzah & Bibit Samad Riyanto) which surpassed its goal of one million members, while citizens widely shared YouTube videos and other online symbols of the cicak and buaya.28 In early December 2009, largely due to public pressure (which also included street rallies organised via social media platforms) charges against Bibit and Chandra were dropped. The significance of social media activism is summed up by key government advisor Dewi Fortuna Anwar, who listed ‘the rise of civil society’ as one of the seven key achievements of the Yudhoyono presidency (2004–2014). She writes: ‘Aided by a revolution in information and communication technology, citizens deployed their resources to galvanise support for causes that had grabbed public attention’.29 Fortuna Anwar cited both Prita Mulyasari and Cicak v Buaya as examples of this civil society online action. While these cases were reactive attempts to manipulate the outcome of certain individuals’ legal battles, both resonated deeply with everyday Indonesians because they exemplified the corruption and injustice inherent in Indonesia’s socio-political context.30 They were pioneer ‘counter-oligarchic’ media moments, mobilised by a population with access to new media platforms. But as Lim concluded from her study of these cases, ‘alternative production is still too minuscule to challenge the dominance of mainstream content’.31 While this was true, social media were becoming increasingly part of Indonesians’ everyday lives, and news media companies began to think about ways in which to adopt, co-opt and manage participatory content sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Andrew Chadwick described this as a ‘hybrid media’ system where groups and individuals are adapting to the emerging balance of power between older and newer media technologies.32 Meanwhile, elites saw new media platforms as simply another way to disseminate content and reach younger audiences. But they were slow to comprehend the new, participatory nature of these platforms, along with the changing producer–consumer dynamic under a hybrid media system. For example, politicians mostly used social media to produce their own content, clarify false or critical reports via their own social media and rarely face direct or difficult questions from citizens or media practitioners. This seems to fit with existing scholarship on Twitter usage elsewhere in the world, whereby elites see it as a way to broadcast their message through an increasingly integrated realm of political communication.33 Similarly, media companies began to create social media pages as a way to disseminate their news product, particularly to young people who were less likely to buy a newspaper and more likely to read news via their mobile

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phone. Dissemination of news via online and new media platforms was fast becoming central to modes of production within news companies. In 2012, they were clearly having success in doing so. Table 4.1 shows the most ‘liked’ (Facebook) or ‘followed’ Indonesian media sites of 2012. Digital conglomerate media dominate the most popular sites. TransTV, Trans7 and Detik are all with Chairul Tanjung’s TransCorp. Viva and TVOne are both part of the Bakrie-owned Visinews Asia. Kompas.com is part of the Kompas Group. Citizen journalism sites and non-conglomerate news sites do not feature. There is no sign of Tempo, Republika or any other company mentioned in chapter three as ‘specialist media’. Thus, in terms of consumption patterns, it would seem that social media sites do not pose a threat to digital conglomerates. Rather, the biggest problem digital conglomerates face with regard to social media platforms is advertising revenues. Online advertising revenue is increasingly headed towards global new media sites such as Google, YouTube, Yahoo, Facebook and Twitter.34 The most financially successful businesses are aggregated services like search engines Google and Yahoo, or services which engage large numbers of readers with low-cost user-generated content like Facebook or, for example, The Huffington Post or BuzzFeed.35 Indonesian news companies receive no money from citizens who follow their news pages on Facebook or Twitter, although they would receive increased ‘hits’ to the site through social media, which can drive advertising. As users scroll through the social media pages throughout the day, media companies are under increased pressure to catch their attention, and get them to click on their particular news story. As Abdul Manan from the Alliance of Indonesian Journalists explained in 2012: The problem at this stage is that the habit of people on the internet is not yet for news, but usually for entertainment. Media companies looking to convergence to online media become entertainment news online, not important news or educational news. They just want clicks. To get online advertising, you need a lot of clicks. This then affects the culture of daily reporting for the journalist and the editor.36 Table 4.1.  Indonesian social media by category (media) 2012 Facebook (media) Facebook Kompas.com MTV Yahoo Indonesia Disney Vivanews.com Source: Social Bakers

Likes 6,023,785 3,472,330 2,227,295 1,753,328 1,750,625 1,726,949

Twitter (media)

Followers

Detik.com METRO TV TVOne Kompas.com TransTV Trans7 VIVANews

7,106,753 5,217,811 4,420,551 2,811,894 2,294,287 2,244,216 1,762,573



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Of course, click-driven journalism and online commentary have been occurring in the media for some time. But in digital conglomerates, news on other platforms is increasingly gauged by what is of interest to readers online. Participatory media enables consumer activity to drive a news story’s fate.37 If a certain story is highly successful online, it may then be deemed worthy to make television news or be in the newspaper edition the next day. Editors of course still adhere to their own news sense, but data from online news sites can provide information on what new consumers want. This does not always translate to quality or credible news and journalism. For example, the yearning for online clicks can turn political coverage into entertainment news; coverage of politicians resembles that of celebrities and elections are covered like a sports game around winners and losers rather than policies and facts.38 Recent scholarship has discussed the political culture of ‘post-truth politics’ which is driven by 24-hour news cycles, false balance in news reporting and social media echo chambers.39 The consequences of ‘bottom-up’ participatory media are not always emancipatory and reformist. In multi-platform news companies, a single news story is repackaged and recycled in numerous forms, and regularly updated via online platforms. This process has been described as the contemporary ‘24-hour news cycle’, where stories are re-told and updated numerous times a day or over a number of days through the addition of regular, titbits of information, ultimately giving the story greater audience reach. Within Indonesian digital conglomerates news cycles, some stories are minimal and are not recycled, others transcend numerous platforms, days and commentary. While some stories are recycled due to editorial (and owner’s) decisions, what determines the news cycle in the digital era is the largest number of online clicks. Journalists and editors keep a close eye on their leading page views, most of which are able to be viewed on their news website under ‘Most Popular’ or ‘Most Read’ stories. Social media sites have thus become a way for media companies to gain a better idea of what consumers are thinking on certain issues and events, and to disseminate content. Thus, the rise of participatory media platforms provides both challenges and opportunities for media companies, grass-roots movements and democratic processes. On the one hand there is concern about the decaying of quality, in-depth reportage in favour of short, click-bait news. On the other hand, individual citizens are shaping news in ways never seen before, which challenges the dominance of mainstream coverage. Indonesia provides an excellent case study to examine the emancipatory role of new media platforms, which are being used to drive counter-oligarchic messages, in particular to challenge existing oligarchs by promoting and advancing new faces in Indonesian politics.

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PARTICIPATORY MEDIA AND THE JOKOWI PHENOMENON Adapting to a convergent media system soon became an essential part of political campaigning. While earlier forms of counter-oligarchic media were highlighted by anger around a particular case or individual, a more telling sign of the way in which digital media platforms could become counter-oligarchic occurs in the political realm. The Jakarta governor’s election of 2012 saw digital media platforms become increasingly influential for political campaigning in Indonesia. By 2012, social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter were central to many Indonesian’s media consumption patterns, including the predominant way in which younger Indonesians initially receive access to daily news. In 2012, Indonesia reached 43 million Facebook users, the third-largest number in the world.40 That same year, Jakarta was the most ‘active’ city in the world on Twitter, and Bandung the sixth most active city (determined by the number of tweets sent) with about 30 million Twitter accounts coming from Indonesia.41 Facebook, Twitter and other participatory media sites became spaces for individual citizens to contest mainstream media dominance and dogma, to develop a diverse array of campaign materials and to disseminate a variety of information. Digital media prod-users Axel Bruns’ term ‘prod-user’ (someone who both produces and consumes content) is particularly relevant in understanding the Jakarta governor election, because prod-users were crucial to producing and distributing campaign material. For example, in June 2012, Jokowi’s campaign experienced a boost with the release of a locally produced music video. A small, local marketing company, CAMEO, adapted the popular UK boy-band One Direction song ‘What Makes You Beautiful’ to Jokowi’s political message of clean governance and reform. The film clip depicts Jakarta’s debilitating traffic, corrupt bureaucrats, floods and poverty and searches for solutions to these problems. The video then explicitly emphasises change by showing Jokowi and his running mate Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (popularly known as Ahok) as a pairing that was new, different and opposed to slow bureaucracy. As Bruns’ work explains, ‘prod-usage’ does not involve erection of finished works by an author, but instead commonly owned, unfinished processes whereby others spread the video online. Within a few weeks, CAMEO’s video had over one million hits on YouTube.42 This video led to other creative adaptations of popular global music videos and by young, tech-savvy prod-users to support Jokowi and Ahok’s



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campaign. Other videos included an adaptation of the international K-pop hit ‘Gangnam Style’ to ‘Jokowi style’, and an adaptation of the internationally popular video game Angry Birds, in which Jokowi throws exploding tomatoes at corrupt officials.43 The ‘prod-user’ in Indonesia began as largely an urban, middle-class Jakartan youth actively participating in the production of campaign material, and sharing alternative forms of locally produced political content on numerous platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Path.44 Digital media allowed for a campaign style that incorporated the creativity of many of Indonesia’s youth, and their interest in the amateur production of pseudo-campaign material. The 2012 Jakarta election saw the arrival of an organised, volunteer group who regularly campaigned on social media. The group was known as JASMEV (Jokowi-Ahok Social Media Volunteers) who promoted Jokowi and Ahok on social media, in particular on Twitter and Facebook. JASMEV was not part of Jokowi’s official media team, and so remained a volunteer organisation of about 20 to 30 people, but it engaged hundreds of users online as part of a larger volunteer community.45 Despite the rather informal and ad hoc nature of JASMEV, it provided a useful online presence and increased Jokowi’s social media activities. For example, Jokowi’s Facebook fan page had nearly nine times as many followers as incumbent mayor Fauzi Bowo’s.46 But the ‘spreadable’ nature of Indonesia’s political videos via social media means the success of such videos should not be measured only according to YouTube views. Television programs broadcast the videos, and online sites reported on their popularity. Editors and journalists monitor social media sites’ online traffic, and sensed the hype surrounding some of the pro-Jokowi initiatives. Those inside Jokowi and Ahok’s campaign team could see that enabling young people to join their campaign, either formally or informally, would be a crucial factor in winning the election, and digital media platforms would be central to this process. Riffa Juffiasari, one of Jokowi’s media staffers throughout the 2012 campaign, said that they changed their campaign strategy to focus on young people, and on grass-roots campaigning rather than traditional methods such as television and billboards: We knew young people would be important in the election. Jakarta had many first-time voters, and many young people in the previous election didn’t bother to vote. So we optimized the use of social media and YouTube, and utilized their [young people’s] skills. They were often volunteers, very creative. We were very open to all. We used the strength of these voices in our campaign.47

Diragayuza Setiawan, who was employed as part of Ahok’s then-Gerindra party media team, said that the 2012 Jakarta governor election showed that ‘the role of the media campaign had changed. We had some TV

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commercials, but we found grass-roots campaign people made better commercials than us’.48 He said he learnt that ‘when it comes to social media, you have to relinquish some control [to those most familiar with it]’.49 New campaign methods delivered via social media platforms allowed Jokowi and Ahok to be portrayed as unique among political actors, as their political campaigning was being done in creative and noticeable ways. The Jokowi–Ahok pairing won the first round in July 2012 with 42% of the vote, the before securing a second-round victory in September. Jokowi and Ahok did not singlehandedly cause social media and other new media platforms to suddenly become politically important in Indonesia, but their rapid success with these platforms meant other politicians soon followed their lead.50 A hybrid media system While success in user-generated content was a feature of the Jokowi–Ahok campaign, the mainstream media still played a central role in increasing Jokowi’s nationwide popularity. In this regard, one cannot understand the success of the Jokowi ‘media phenomenon’ without understanding the impact of the convergent media cycle on political news production. The 2012 Jakarta election saw prominent coverage from all of Jakarta’s large media companies. Because all of the big conglomerates are based in the capital, yet broadcast nationwide, the Jakarta election became a national election by virtue of its expansive media coverage. One study concluded that these ‘very powerful messages’ were being spread all over Indonesia, where television viewers throughout the archipelago were ‘being force-fed every detail of Jakartan life repeatedly for weeks’.51 As governor, Jokowi’s media-friendly activities meant that news companies soon lusted after stories of his daily events. In particular, Jokowi’s blusukans (loosely translated as ‘unscheduled visits’) became a daily feature of Indonesia’s national news. Conducting blusukans meant leaving the office to travel to problem areas, inspect government offices, meet with neighbourhood groups and greet individuals from all walks of life. This simple approach to governance was the single most important aspect of Jokowi’s media success. Jokowi’s blusukans meant that journalists sought him for news, rather than him seeking out media owners for favourable coverage. In early 2014, Jokowi told me, ‘I learned in Solo how to manage the media. We make a differentiation. We go the problem locations. We go to the poor people, to the riverbank, for example, and this is sexy for the media’.52 The tactic was to visit Jakarta’s urban poor regularly, a strategy generally rare in political campaigns or governance in Indonesia, and certainly different from the



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formal ceremonies and speeches of Indonesia’s then-president, Yudhoyono. As Jokowi said: ‘If I stay in the office every day, do you think they will cover me? If you interview in the office or shoot television footage in the office it is not sexy, but if you go to the slum area the readers [reporters] and footage will be more sexy’.53 Jokowi’s blusukans almost always occurred during the morning, because the media were looking for stories to file for midday news bulletins, and enabled them to provide rolling coverage throughout the day on 24-hour television stations and online news sites. By January 2014, in a survey conducted by Indikator Politik, 82% of respondents said they had seen Jokowi on television, the highest of all political figures and well ahead of the next highest Aburizal Bakrie (63%) and Prabowo (62%).54 When an area of Jakarta flooded, Jokowi visited it, sometimes taking off his shoes and wading through the water. When Jokowi planned to move Jakarta street vendors from the side of the road in a notoriously difficult area for traffic, he visited the area and discussed this policy with the local street vendors, cameras capturing those discussions, sometimes live to air. As a result, his style of governance was presented as consultative, transparent and solution-based. As Mietzner writes, the blusukan ‘cemented Jokowi’s image as an on-the-ground problem fixer and grassroots communicator’.55 The blusukan soon became a way for other politicians to try to receive news coverage, and they too arranged unscheduled (and often unwelcome) visits to government departments, with television cameras in tow, and uploaded the content to YouTube.56 President Yudhoyono even dedicated a chapter in his book, Selalu Ada Pilihan, to the blusukan, having previously said that he too often conducts blusukans, ‘but from the heart’.57 The blusukan also had direct benefit for online news sites,58 which, like 24-hour news stations, require regular, updated titbits of information. There was little doubt Jokowi’s blusukans were attracting huge numbers of hits. The blusukans ushered in a new form of governance that was media-friendly, and they helped Jokowi become the politician most regularly covered in the news. After the Jakarta election, Jokowi stories continued to create enormous audience ratings and hits throughout 2013 and early 2014. All of the chief editors interviewed throughout 2013 and 2014 claimed that Jokowi stories were the most popular news reports. Gatot Triyanto, chief editor of TransTV, acknowledged that ‘60 percent’ of his viewers were from Jakarta, and he said it was clear Jokowi was improving the ratings for his news stations: ‘Even since he has become a governor the ratings have risen. During the [January 2014] floods, people are watching to hear what Jokowi has to say’.59 Online media data show the popularity of Jokowi in 2013. Kompas.com’s top-thirty most-read stories for each month of the year 2013 showed that, of these 360 stories, a total of 86 featured Jokowi or Ahok (around 25%).

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However, of these 360 popular stories, 130 were unrelated to politics and current events, as they were generated by Kompas TEKNO, which promotes the latest mobile phone and android applications. Thus, of 2013’s top monthly stories at Kompas.com that covered Indonesian news and current affairs, over 37% featured Jokowi and Ahok.60 Data from Detik.com show that ‘total hits’ on Jokowi stories in 2012 numbered 136.5 million and hits on Jokowi stories in 2013 were 195.5 million. The daily average unique users to click on a Jokowi story in 2013 was 535,856.61 The commentary and shares around these stories were mostly positive towards Jokowi. One indicator of this coverage occurred on 21 August 2012, when Kompas.com reported that senior politician Amien Rais had criticised Jokowi, and 11,336 readers commented on that story – the greatest number of comments for a single story since the site was established in 2008.62 A cursory examination of those comments shows that most of them attacked Amien Rais. Politicians soon realised that if they publicly criticised Jokowi, they would likely attract direct criticism on online news sites. Jokowi’s stories were receiving thousands of hits, and, as a result, editors instructed journalists to follow Jokowi every day. All chief editors interviewed for this research, including those in oligarchic media companies, said their organisation covered Jokowi as a ‘phenomenon’ because of the great interest from the audience and readers. Kompas.com even dedicated a section of its website to ‘Jokowi-Ahok First 100 Days’. Chief editor Taufik Mihardja said in 2014 this was ‘to make it easier for the people to access news about Jokowi and Ahok. We knew the demand was there so people could go straight to that section. It is also easier to follow up with consistent updated news, rather than put it all together with other news’.63 They all echoed a point made by Kompas chief editor Rikard Bagun, who said Jokowi was ‘the people’s darling, not the media’s darling. The media are just amplifying the people’s views’.64 Given the unprecedented coverage focused on him, Jokowi led all nationwide polls as the most popular candidate for president throughout 2013 and 2014 as the one candidate who provided the potential for a break from Indonesia’s established political elite.65 In this regard, Jokowi’s popularity challenged the established media oligarchy whereby the owner insists on direct coverage of himself and limits coverage of rival candidates. Chief editors knew that Jokowi was the most popular politician and coverage of other less popular politicians would almost certainly see less audience interaction. Jokowi’s unconventional campaigning allowed and encouraged increased participatory media engagement.66 Consumers played an active role in collecting, supporting, analysing and disseminating Jokowi-themed content. Prior to the 2014 election, it had been argued that participatory media were more likely to involve activities for ‘fringes’ of urban middle classes, where



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their success in shaping news and coverage ‘is less likely when the narrative is contested by dominant competing narratives generated in mainstream media’.67 By the end of the 2014 election year, it was the urban middle classes who were most responsible for driving political content online and through mainstream media coverage. Tempo reported in April 2014 that of the 8.2 million ‘conversations’ online and on social media regarding a number of presidential candidates, 6.9 million are about Jokowi, with 1.3 million about the other candidates.68 Jokowi was not a ‘fringe’ candidate for a group of digital-savvy, middle-class youth but had transcended platforms to become the most-talked-about politician around the country. However, as explained in the previous chapter, Jokowi’s struggle with oligarchic forces was complex and fluid. As the previous chapter outlined, much of the mainstream Indonesian media were highly partisan throughout the election year of 2014. It was clear that Jokowi needed both participatory media and oligarchic mainstream media support if he was going to become president.

New media and the 2014 elections Given the rise of social media platforms in Indonesia, there was much hype around the potential for new digital campaigning to shape voting patterns in the 2014 elections.69 While predictions that 2014 would be Indonesia’s ‘social media election’70 were not realised, campaigning through digital media platforms became a new and often experimental avenue for both presidential candidates, Jokowi and Prabowo. At the start of 2014, digital media initiatives were potential avenues to help sway a large proportion of young voters to a particular candidate,71 including 67 million Indonesians who would be voting for the first time. While middle-aged Indonesians were sceptical of information online, those under 25 years of age were just as likely to have confidence in the political information presented on social media and the internet as on television and newspapers.72 It became common during and after the 2014 elections to describe Jokowi’s campaign as ‘bottom-up’, implying a disorganised, unpaid, multifaceted group of supporters, not all of whom were talking to each other.73 Jokowi’s fractured online campaign was in part a product of the dysfunctional and often destabilising PDI-P election campaign, in which some political advertising for the party did not actually feature Jokowi himself, given that party patron Megawati Sukarnoputri believed Jokowi was a ‘party cadre’.74 Faced with a poor campaign from the ‘top-down’, Jokowi’s volunteer groups believed messages driven by ordinary citizens were crucial. They argued that

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the (usually online) volunteer-created material made Jokowi appear more honest and sincere than other highly scripted campaign messages.75 Indeed, Jokowi’s communities included heavy metal rockers, graphic novelists, video gamers, activists and families of human rights victims. In addition to a ‘grass-roots’ volunteer community, many prominent Indonesian singers and performers were willing to contribute to his campaign. These initiatives were often shared through social media platforms, including the song Salam Dua Jari which portrayed inclusiveness and positivity as central to a Jokowi presidency. The Facebook profile ‘I stand on the right side’ with Jokowi as candidate ‘Number 2’ saw people openly support Jokowi on their social media sites and led to numerous fervent discussions on social media between friends, family and others,76 all of which exemplified the increasing openness of political discussion in Indonesia. Yet, the confusing and at times even contradictory campaign meant a cohesive message was lacking. One example of this dysfunction was that Jokowi had four ‘official’ Facebook pages and numerous Twitter profiles. If a voter was trying to form an idea of Jokowi’s major policies, he or she would be unlikely to derive an answer from the swathe of information and content delivered via the ‘pro-Jo’ social media pages and websites. At the same time, Jokowi’s previously successful blusukan-style campaigning ‘on the ground’ was becoming tedious, time-consuming and superficial, as many voters yearned for concrete policies. As a result of this and other reasons discussed later in this chapter, Jokowi’s popularity plummeted, and in the lead-up to election day, Prabowo actually began to lead Jokowi in the polls.77 In contrast, Prabowo’s campaign was ‘top-down’. Messages were driven from the senior hierarchy of the Gerindra party, including Prabowo himself. Gerindra maintained a highly professional social media centre in Ragunan, where around 15 full-time employees surveyed social media data and information around the clock. When Gerindra party officials spoke on an issue, they sang from the same song-sheet, and those same messages were delivered online and via social media platforms, particularly on Facebook. Prabowo had also hired American media advisor Rob Allyn of Margate Films. Throughout the heated election campaign, as Prabowo made various statements about the subversive role of ‘foreign intervention’, Gerindra figures such as Fadli Zon publicly denied Rob Allyn was working with them,78 although Allyn did write at least one piece explaining his involvement where he claimed the TV ads were a ‘crucial factor’ in Prabowo’s closing of the gap in the polls.79 In March 2015, Fadli Zon said: ‘Rob Allyn was used as an expert in making ads and an advisor of advertising. I think political campaigning is becoming more like it is in the US. We used his knowledge but still needed to discuss the Indonesian perspective’.80 Fadli Zon was certainly right that political campaigning in Indonesia was becoming more like that of campaigns in the



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United States. Earlier we noted how TVOne was modelling its format on Fox News, and how many Indonesian owners felt that the media taking sides is similar to what happens in the United States. But the most telling resemblance to US campaigning was the so-called ‘black campaigns’ or smear campaigns widely shared online. Throughout the election campaign, Prabowo and Gerindra highlighted the subordinate nature of Jokowi’s relationship with Megawati. The success of this campaign saw Jokowi represented as Capres Boneka (puppet presidential candidate) complete with a photo of him placing Megawati’s hand to his forehead in a gesture of supplication or obeisance, all circulated widely on social media. The ‘black campaign’ escalated when Jokowi, a Javanese Muslim, was portrayed as a Chinese Christian, including a ridiculous allegation that his name was actually Oey Hong Liong. These messages were trialled on social media first, through the Twitter feed of @triomacan2000 (previously @triomacan, before it was shut down by Twitter), a distinctly pro-Prabowo Twitter handle, and through other sites such as ‘Halaman Forum Apakabar 7 Majalah Superkoran’ and PKS Piyungan.81 Given the success of these messages online, Prabowo supporters printed a ‘yellow newspaper’ with the masthead Obor Rakyat, and distributed thousands of copies throughout Madura Island and East Java in May 2014, and later in West Java, areas where Jokowi would struggle to win votes. Jokowi was forced to respond to such allegations, leading to further distraction.82 The similarity with the US campaign where Barack Obama’s nationality and religious beliefs were often questioned (in Obama’s case, of course, the black campaign asserted that he was a Muslim) did not go unnoticed.83 Much later, Jokowi’s team printed their own leaflet Pelayan Rakyat, funded by Jawa Pos Group’s Dahlan Iskan. A few days before the election, Jokowi travelled to Mecca. He had done this in the Jakarta governor election, and in any case campaigning in the few days before the election was not allowed under Indonesian election law, but it showed the importance of countering the ‘black campaign’ that he should have to further emphasise his Islamic credentials. Throughout the campaign, as his polling numbers plummeted, Jokowi would attribute this trend to the success of the ‘black campaign’, a point he reiterated after the election.84 With only a few days to go, Jokowi’s volunteers held a concert in Jakarta at the national stadium, which drew 70,000 people. The so-called Salam Dua Jari concert was broadcast live on MetroTV, and was well supported via online and social media platforms. The hashtag ‘#akhirnyamemilijokowi’ (in the end, voting for Jokowi) was trending on Twitter. More importantly, the concert produced a now iconic image of Jokowi at the front of the stage surrounded by hundreds of thousands of people at Indonesia’s National Stadium, which was widely shared on social media and in the mainstream media

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realm, including the front page of Kompas. The image projected something Jokowi’s fragmented campaign had lacked since its beginning: a grand-scale, inspiring, big-picture event. Perhaps for the first time, Jokowi’s campaign seemed presidential. The 2014 election campaign raised many questions regarding the nature of mainstream oligarchic media and counter-oligarchic forces. Which new media campaign was more effective? Jokowi’s ‘bottom-up’ or Prabowo’s ‘top-down’? In one exit poll conducted on polling day by Indikator Politik, Indonesians were more likely to vote for Prabowo if they were from urban areas, tertiary educated and more wealthy (monthly incomes of over Rp. 1–2 million).85 It is this demographic that is more likely to be using social media platforms. However, surveys throughout 2014 showed that young voters were more likely to lean towards voting for Jokowi, and as we have noted, social media platforms are largely accessed by Indonesians under the age of 30.86 Others concluded that Jokowi ‘won’ on Twitter, while Prabowo ‘won’ on Facebook, if judged purely on numbers of followers on the social media sites.87 What is clear is that the digital media realm became a space where individual citizens collectively encouraged new forms of campaign material production, disseminated by volunteers and Indonesia’s increasingly online, social media–savvy youth. Were these many and varied pro-Jokowi online initiatives ‘counteroligarchic’? Those in favour of the oligarchy thesis emphasise that Jokowi was allowed to campaign as candidate for Jakarta governor in the first place only due to the machinations of oligarchs Megawati Sukarnoputri and Prabowo Subianto. Jokowi and his then running mate, Ahok, were supported by a well-funded Gerindra media team that, among other initiatives, spent significant amounts on television advertising.88 Once in power, it was the oligarchic media (largely TVOne and MetroTV) that, through constant coverage of Jokowi’s blusukans, made him into a national figure. This consistent, unrelenting coverage must have had support from the stations’ owners, such as Aburizal Bakrie and Surya Paloh, even if their reasons for such support were profit-driven. Once the election year began, the oligarchs controlled the coverage of the election, and, as they have done in the past, took sides. To win, Jokowi allied himself with various New Order oligarchs, such as his vice-presidential running mate, Jusuf Kalla, and media moguls Surya Paloh, Dahlan Iskan and James Riady. Rather than a victory of the individual citizen over the oligarchs allied to Prabowo, Jokowi’s victory was, in fact, a victory of one set of oligarchs over another. Those in favour of the oligarchy thesis might say that Jokowi’s victory means that while he is a new face on the scene, he is ‘drawn into the same predatory practices that had defined politics in Indonesia in the first place’ as the old faces continue to be the drivers of political power.89 In short, the political system is still dominated by oligarchy, whether Jokowi is there or not.



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However, I argue that Jokowi’s victory also represented a break from the oligarchic New Order–era rulers who have dominated Indonesian media and politics since 1998. Jokowi’s rise as a media phenomenon represents a new, media-darling form of popular politician, driven by widespread coverage of a unique form of governance and the regular publicising of political polling data concerning presidential candidates. Jokowi may have needed the backing of Megawati and Prabowo to become the candidate for the Jakarta governorship, but he still had to beat the well-funded Fauzi-Bowo campaign to win. As Fealy wrote, ‘The Jakarta election showed that conventional political strategies relying on big money and establishment figures were now vulnerable to independent candidates who could connect with electors and draw favourable media attention’.90 Even if this campaign was heavily supported by Gerindra, no serious commentator would argue that Prabowo and Megawati supported his nomination for governor because they wanted him to eventually become president. They clearly hoped for that position themselves. Many people who supported Jokowi’s campaign did so through volunteer groups and through social media platforms. In Jokowi, many people saw a change from the old oligarchs, such as Fauzi Bowo, then Yudhoyono and, later (for the most part), Prabowo. Jokowi’s success was to a large extent driven by grass-roots campaigning and volunteer communities, as well as new media initiatives and the ‘prod-user’, and many in the general public who yearned for news of a politician who represented a break from the familiar faces of Indonesian politics. During the election year, as their power and influence became increasingly threatened, most media oligarchs allied with the former New Order general and oligarch Prabowo, and consistently used their media companies to attack Jokowi and promote their own interests. Meanwhile, Surya Paloh (and others) supported Jokowi and covered his campaign, showing that media oligarchy still played a part in Jokowi’s success. But as Aspinall writes, that these struggles are complex, and take place in contradictory and fragmented ways, involving ever-shifting political coalitions and conflicts, reflects the complexity of Indonesian democracy and the kaleidoscopic patterns of social interest that underpin it.91

Certainly, rich individuals will continue to dominate the political economy of the media industry in Indonesia, as they do in many other democracies around the world. But Jokowi’s rise shows the power of ‘non-oligarchic or counter-oligarchic actors and groups’ to challenge the media’s power and influence.92 The presidential election was indeed close, but Jokowi’s rise from local mayor to eventually become president in a period of only two years shows that rather than submitting to the same old predatory practices of oligarchy, new practices and initiatives to gain political momentum were forged. Community leaders, civil society groups and activists were partly

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responsible for Jokowi’s victory, and thus for ‘a credible defence of the democratic project’.93 The media was indeed a vehicle and venue in the creation of the Jokowi phenomenon, and the Suharto-era oligarchic power and dominance were openly and spectacularly challenged. The rise of counter-oligarchic media The Jokowi phenomenon solidified the idea among many young, urban Indonesians that action in the digital media space mattered. To many Indonesians, Jokowi’s rise to the presidency signalled the potential for traditional oligarchs to be usurped.94 After the election, a number of important digital media initiatives blossomed to further exemplify the increased importance of digital media platforms in Indonesian politics and society. In the aftermath of voting day, the most immediate counter-oligarchic movement was Kawal Pemilu (Guard the Elections), an initiative of civilian internet users to crowdsource voting tabulation around the country.95 The group formed because of the way in which Prabowo and other oligarchs within the Red and White Coalition refused to concede defeat, claiming victory on the basis of clearly manipulated ‘quick counts’. As we noted in the previous chapter, this included using the television stations of oligarchs Aburizal Bakrie and Hary Tanoesoedibjo to claim victory for Prabowo. In the immediate aftermath of the election, Edward Aspinall, who would later describe the 2014 elections as Indonesia’s ‘most severe threat of authoritarian regression since the transition to democratic rule began in 1998’,96 argued, along with Marcus Mietzner, that Prabowo’s ‘game plan’ was to ‘muddy the statistical waters’.97 Upon reading Aspinall and Mietzner’s account, a group of digital-savvy youths organised the collective tabulation of four million voting forms which were uploaded to the internet.98 One of the founders, Ainun Najib, was based in Singapore at the time. He explains the process in this way: We were looking to tabulate the numbers and many people were thinking the same thing. It wasn’t an original idea. One day after the election we were concerned by claims made by Prabowo that he had not conceded and that reputable quick counts were dismissed. The nation was split into two. We had hoped the losing candidate – whoever that might be – would concede straight away. People were comparing the situation to the 1960s.99

Kawal Pemilu allowed ordinary citizens to check the results, so that votes could be tabulated in the immediate aftermath of the election. The transparent nature of Kawal Pemilu meant many KPU (Indonesia Electoral Commission) officials were under greater scrutiny because the forms were being uploaded online and cheating was less likely because officials knew the voting results



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were being crowdsourced. The Kawal Pemilu showed the ability of ordinary citizens using digital technologies to counter the wishes of oligarchic forces who attempted to ‘steal the results’. Digital media played another leading role in countering oligarchic wishes in late 2014 with regard to the potential abandoning of local direct elections in Indonesia. Party leaders Prabowo and Aburizal Bakrie were strongly in favour of a bill to abolish direct elections of local district chiefs, given that local elections had allowed for the rise of popular politicians Jokowi and Ahok, among others. These oligarchs preferred political parties to choose local district chiefs, arguing local elections were too expensive and corrupt.100 Parliament voted on the bill in late 2014, when President Yudhoyono, now in the final stages of his presidency, was in the United States. Yudhoyono failed to ensure that his party’s parliamentary faction would vote against it, and as such his party abstained from the vote, thereby allowing the bill to pass. Almost immediately, Yudhoyono faced strong criticism online, with the hashtag #shameonyouSBY trending on Twitter, which was affecting his image as a democratic reformer. Yudhoyono chose to act, posting a video on YouTube explaining his party’s actions and outlining his plan to reintroduce direct elections, which he eventually did via a government regulation in lieu of law.101 In 2016, Yudhoyono told the story in a different way, arguing that he was never in favour of abolishing direct elections: Whether or not there was hashtags at that time, I could not accept the changes to become elected by local parliament. On the way back from Washington to Jakarta, via Osaka, I came up with a solution. I prepared the perpu [regulation in lieu of law]. OK sanity . . . I was consistent. It was my choice. So it was not because I was pressed by a hashtag. Indeed from the beginning even before I went to America, the Democratic Party position was clear: we reject [the Bill].102

Yudhoyono said that the #shameonyouSBY was another case where ‘in certain moments’ social media ‘mobilises people’s emotions, manipulates, so that it looks massive, but it was temporary. In the whole year there may be no more than five like that. The rest is favourable towards me’.103 Yet Yudhoyono’s obsession with his social media image (which included the First Lady’s highly popular Instagram page) meant he was susceptible to strong criticism online and on social media. Once out of office, in his personal interview he commented that ‘On my Twitter, I have around 8.6 million followers, my Facebook almost 6 million, [First Lady] Ibu Ani has Instagram 4.2 million. There they write “thankyou SBY, sorry Yudhoyono, I used to blaspheme and criticise you. I miss you SBY. I wish you well’”.104

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The ability of digital media platforms to allow citizens to directly criticise government policies provides some hope for the potential for mass participatory media to influence individual politicians. It is now common for Indonesian politicians to receive briefings from advisors as to social media sentiment on certain issues. They do not always lean towards popular consensus (and nor should they), but it does enable them to have a greater understanding of how citizens with internet access are discussing the issues and events over which their government presides. The examples of Kawal Pemilu and #shameonyouSBY do provide two examples where thousands of Indonesians have used digital media platforms to usurp the motives of oligarchs. In both cases, new media wrestled the power back into the hands of democracy campaigners, showing the potential for digital media to encourage reform. This is not to say that counter-oligarchic digital media initiatives always win. In the first few months of 2015, digital media activists attempted to online ‘crowdsource’ Jokowi’s first cabinet by inviting the public to nominate ministers. The idea was that if the decisions surrounding ministerial positions were taken away from key oligarchs, then the result would be more democratic, and a more reformist cabinet would ensue. Jokowi did not take up the idea. Instead, party patrons Megawati Sukarnoputri, Aburizal Bakrie and Surya Paloh were influential in determining the selection of ministers.105 Electing a cabinet on his own terms was the first hurdle Jokowi failed to clear, and very quickly the volunteer community, including those who had advocated for Jokowi via digital media platforms, felt like they were being shut out. As Muhtadi argued, ‘When the election ended, politics shifted from the volunteers and voting masses back to the elites’.106 However, the battle between elites and ordinary citizens continued, but this time it did not include ‘pro-Jokowi’ forces. This became clearer in early 2015 in yet another public battle between the police and the Corruption Eradication Commission, with media elites rallying behind police-chief candidate Budi Gunawan, and civil society using Twitter and other digital media platforms to campaign to ‘save the KPK’. Jokowi was squeezed between oligarchs and the citizens who saw Gunawan as typical of corruption within the police. Jokowi later named Budi Gunawan as deputy police chief, while the KPK was severely weakened in the wash-up. Jokowi disappointed many who had seen his presidency as a counter-oligarchic movement, and in this particular case their lobbying seemed to have achieved only the outcome of moving Gunawan from police chief to deputy police chief, a nominal reform at best. By the end of his first year, a Tempo special edition entitled ‘Jokowi’s Dilemma’ was asking ‘who is affecting the President’s policies?’107 As Jokowi disappointed, netizens pushing counter-oligarchic movements began to invest their energies in supporting new Jakarta governor Ahok. Ahok left Prabowo’s Gerindra party in the aftermath of the party’s support



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for abolishing direct elections. A group called Teman Ahok (Friends of Ahok) rallied to his cause to gain the 525,000 signatures needed to allow him to run for office as an independent. They created a digital application enabling motorcyclists to pick up signature forms and deliver them to the group’s office at no cost, and reached nearly one million signatures – easily more than they needed – by mid-2016.108 These are just a few examples, but of course there have been many cases where digital media strategies in Indonesia have failed. Change.org petitions go unnoticed; newsworthy Facebook-driven campaigns are not picked up by mainstream media companies; issues exposed through online platforms get lost in the sea of online punditry and commentary; tweets which express alternative views become enveloped in a cocoon of nastiness. While Indonesia has always maintained ‘perpetual frictions that occur between oligarchic, popular, and other interests’,109 netizens transitioning from one politician to another show how these oligarchic and popular forces are likely to continue to battle and manipulate each other in the ensuing years, and increasingly so via digital media platforms. CONCLUSION In the pre-digital era, the ways in which audiences responded to media content, and how they interpreted it, were more difficult to ascertain. The process of convergence has meant the distinction between consumer and producer has become blurred, with significant consequences for mass communication and its effect on politics. Social movements and insurgent politics are able to intervene more decisively in the digital era.110 If the medium is digital, can the message be one of a popular voice? Castells, for example, has argued that ‘counterpower . . . are deliberate attempts to change power relationships . . . by engaging in the production of mass media messages and by developing autonomous networks of horizontal communication’.111 For Castells, the digital era allows citizens to subvert traditional practices of communication by ‘occupying the medium and creating the message’.112 In Indonesia, citizens have individually and collectively used both the hybrid digital mainstream media, and new digital media ‘mass-self communication’ platforms to circumvent the influence of the media oligarchs. They have done so by assisting creatively and collectively in an increasingly participatory media environment. There is little doubt that digital media have led to new, transformative configurations of power relations. The configurations described in this chapter are attempts to usurp elite control of politics and the media. As the previous two chapters showed, an analysis of the role

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of oligarchs contributes much to our understanding of contemporary Indonesian media and politics. The increasing oligarchical nature of that mainstream media and the subsequent power of media owners to control coverage were crucial to any understanding of Indonesian society in the digital era. But digital media platforms are fast becoming central to the way in which ordinary citizens attempt to control the message. Digital media have become a space highlighting Indonesia’s divergent society. Of course, this divergence between elites asserting their influence through large conglomerates and ordinary citizens pushing for reforms has been central to Indonesian politics for some time. But digitalisation has enhanced one particular sector of civil society who are able to use new, participatory platforms to push for change. Some empirical examples of these initiatives have been provided in this chapter, such as the ‘Jokowi phenomenon’ and the Kawal Pemilu initiative. Although Indonesia has undergone considerable changes since reformasi, most of its citizens continue to have little faith in the police, the justice system or the parliament. Other more respected institutions such as the Corruption Eradication Commission (or KPK) have been consistently undermined by oligarchs. Many of Indonesia’s younger citizens privileged with regular internet access are using digital media platforms to express their concerns and bring about reforms. Digital media, which partly assisted in bringing President Joko Widodo to power, remain a key avenue where Indonesians have some autonomy in effecting change.

NOTES 1. ‘Crowdsourcing Project Monitors Kenya Election’, Deutsche Welle, 2 March 2013, accessed 21 November 2016, http://www.dw.com/en/crowdsourcing-projectmonitors-kenya-election/a-16640907. 2. Auralice Gradd, Stefaan Verhulst and Andrew Young, ‘Indonesia’s Kawal Pemilu: Elections: Free, Fair and Open Data’, GovLab Report, accessed 21 November 2016, http://odimpact.org/case-indonesias-kawal-pemilu.html. 3. Ibid. 4. Effendi Gazali, ‘Learning by Clicking: An Experiment with Social Media Democracy in Indonesia’, The International Communication Gazette, 76 (2014), 425–439. 5. See Darin Barney et al. (eds.), The Participatory Condition in the Digital Age (University of Minnesota Press, Minnesota, 2016). 6. Vincent Miller, Understanding Digital Culture (Sage, London, 2011), 15. 7. Axel Bruns, Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond (Peter Lang, 2008). 8. Guiditta De Prato, Esteve Sanz and Jean Paul Simon, ‘Conclusion’, in Guiditta De Prato, Esteve Sanz and Jean Paul Simon (eds.), Digital Media Worlds: The New Economy of the Media (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 187.



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9. Manuel Castells, Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age (Polity Press, UK, 2012), 9. 10. Henry Jenkins, Sam Ford and Joshua Green, Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture (New York: New York University Press, 2009). 11. John Palfrey and Urs Gasser, Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives (Basic Books, New York, 2008). 12. Castells, Networks of Outrage and Hope, 9. 13. Engin Isin and Evelyn Rupert, Being Digital Citizens (Rowman and Littlefield, London, 2015), 77. 14. Edward Aspinall, ‘Popular Agency and Interests in Indonesia’s Democratic transition and Consolidation’, Indonesia 96 (2013), 102–103. 15. Marcus Mietzner, ‘Reinventing Asian Populism: Jokowi’s Rise, Democracy, and Political Contestation in Indonesia’, Policy Studies, East-West Center 72 (2015), 8. See also Indonesia 96 (October 2013; Special Issue: Wealth, Power, and Contemporary Indonesian Politics) and Michele Ford and Thomas Pepinsky, eds., Beyond Oligarchy: Wealth, Power, and Contemporary Indonesian Politics (Southeast Asia Program Publications, Ithaca, 2014). 16. Marcus Mietzner, ‘Oligarchs, Politicians, and Activists: Contesting Party Politics in Post-Suharto Indonesia’, in Ford and Pepinsky (eds.), Beyond Oligarchy, 99–116. 17. Doris Graber, ‘Political Communication Faces in the 21st Century’, Journal of Communication (September 2005), 495, http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/down load?doi=10.1.1.505.7251&rep=rep1&type=pdf. 18. Castells, Networks of Outrage and Hope, 4. 19. Text messaging became ‘endemic’ in Indonesia as mobile phone usage became ubiquitous, while phone calls remained uncommon largely because they were expensive and unreliable connections. In 2015, Jakarta was ranked the world’s worst for traffic. 20. Eric Eldon, ‘Indonesia, Taiwan, Philippines and India Gained the Most Facebook Users in Asia Last Month’, 12 November 2009, accessed 12 May 2016, http://www.adweek.com/socialtimes/indonesia-taiwan-philippines-and-india-gainedthe-most-facebook-users-in-asia-last-month/231115. 21. Andrew Keen, The Internet Is Not the Answer (Atlantic Monthly Press, New York, 2015), x. 22. Alice Marwick and Danah Boyd, ‘I Tweet Honestly, I Tweet Passionately: Twitter Users, Content Collapse, and the Imagined Audience’, New Media and Society 13, 1 (2011), 114–133. 23. Ibid. 24. Merlyna Lim, ‘Many Clicks but Little Sticks: Social Media Activism in Indonesia’, Journal of Contemporary Asia 43, 6 (2013), 636–657. 25. Lim, ‘Many clicks’. 26. See John Postill, ‘Digital Activism in Indonesia’, in Ross Tapsell and Edwin Jurriens (eds.), Digital Indonesia: Challenges and Opportunities of the Digital Revolution (ISEAS, Singapore, 2017).

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27. Ibid. 28. Ibid. 29. Dewi Fortuna Anwar, ‘Yudhoyono’s Legacy: An Insider’s View’, in Edward Aspinall, Marcus Mietzner Dirk Tomsa (eds.), The Yudhoyono Presidency: Indonesia’s Decade of Stability and Stagnation (ISEAS, Singapore, 2015), 28. 30. Hamideh Molaei, ‘Discursive Opportunity Structure and the Contribution of Social Media to the Success of Social Movements in Indonesia’, Information, Communication and Society 18, 1 (2015), 104. 31. Lim, ‘Many Clicks but Few Sticks’. 32. Andrew Chadwick, The Hybrid Media System: Politics and Power (Oxford Studies in Digital Politics, Oxford, 2013). 33. Andreas Jungherr, ‘Twitter Use in Election Campaigns: A Systematic Literature Review’, Journal of Information Technology and Politics 13, 1 (2016), 72–91. 34. Nic Newman, ‘Media Journalism and Technology Predictions 2016’, Digital News Publications, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, 2016, accessed 12 November 2016, http://digitalnewsreport.org/publications/2016/predictions-2016/. 35. See ‘The Newspaper Industry’, in Guiditta De Prato, Esteve Sanz and Jean Paul Simon (eds.), Digital Media Worlds: The New Economy of the Media (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). 36. Abdul Manan, personal interview, Jakarta, December 2012. 37. See Jenkins, Ford and Green, Spreadable Media, 2009. 38. Eric Louw, The Media and Political Process (Sage 2005). 39. The term is attributed to blogger David Roberts, who used the term in 2010 in the column for Grist. 40. Lim, ‘Many Clicks but Few Sticks’. 41. Semiocast, ‘Twitter Reaches Half a Billion Accounts’, 30 July 2012, accessed 12 May 2016, http://semiocast.com/en/publications/2012_07_30_Twitter_reaches_ half_a_billion_accounts_140m_in_the_US. 42. See ‘Jokowi dan Basuki – What Makes You Beautiful by One Direction’, CameoProject, 25 August 2012, accessed 12 May 2015, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=f-zR65eXXPc. 43. ‘K-pop’, or ‘Korean pop’, is a genre of music first popularised in South Korea that features a wide range of audio-visual components. Angry Birds is a video game that was originally designed for touchscreen-based devices, especially smartphones. 44. Over one-third of Indonesia’s eligible voters in the 2014 presidential election were ‘between the ages of 16 and 20’ and had not voted before. See Nicolas Picard and Michelle Chang, ‘Will Indonesia’s Online Youth Shape 2014 Elections?’, Asia Foundation, 16 October 2013, accessed 20 January 2015, http://asiafoundation.org/ in-asia/2013/10/16/will-indonesias-online-youth-shape-2014-elections/. 45. Key people involved were Kartika Juniardi, Alexander Ferry, Alexander Jerry, Sony Subrata and Jose Rizal. 46. There were 18,712 views versus 2,862 views. See Djohansyah Saleh, ‘Indonesia Falls for Social Media’, Weber and Shandwick, Indonesia, 12 August 2013, accessed 20 January 2015, https://www.ipra.org/news/itle/indonesia-falls-for-social-media-isjakarta-the-worlds-number-one-twitter-city/.



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47. Personal interview with Riffa Juffiasari, Jakarta, 7 January 2014. 48. Personal interview with Diragayuza Setiawan, Jakarta, 9 January 2014. He estimated that Gerindra’s media team spent around 10% of its campaign budget on social media advertising and promotions. 49. Ibid. 50. A Twitter audit reported the following percentages of ‘fake’ Twitter followers: for Gita Wirjawan, 74%; Anies Baswedan, 65%; and Dahlan Iskan, 61%, accessed 14 August 2014, http://www.deliknews.com/wp-content/themes/Transcript/ cache/2014/02/twitter-audit.png. 51. Nugroho et al., ‘Shaping Content, Shaping Society’, 40. 52. Personal interview with Jokowi, Jakarta, 10 January 2014. 53. Ibid. 54. Indikator Politik Survey, January 2014. 55. Marcus Mietzner, ‘Jokowi: Rise of the Polite Populist’, Inside Indonesia 116 (2014), accessed 12 May 2016, http://www.insideindonesia.org/jokowi-rise-of-apolite-populist. 56. For example ‘Ganjar Pranowo Marah-Marah pada Kepala BKD’, 20 November 2013, accessed 20 January 2015, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yl6p4RQGA6w. 57. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Selalu Ada Pilihan (Jakarta: Penerbit Buku Kompas, 2014). 58. The average time a reader spends on each story is only around 2.5 minutes and thus is ideal for those who consume news via mobile, hand-held devices such as smartphones. The average time a reader spends on a story is about 7 minutes. 59. Author’s interview with Gatot Triyanto, Jakarta, 23 January 2014. 60. Kompas.com internal data supplied to the author. 61. Detik.com internal data supplied to the author. 62. M. Wismabrata, ‘Amien Rais: Predikat Wali Kota Terbaik Menyesatkan’, Kompas.com, 21 August 2012, accessed 20 January 2015, http://megapolitan.kompas. com/read/2012/08/21/1625103/Amien.Rais.Predikat.Walikota.Terbaik.Menyesatkan. See also ‘Ini 10 Berita Kompas.com Paling Banyak Dikomentari Tahun 2012’, Kompas.com, 3 January 2013, accessed 20 January 2015, http://lipsus.kompas.com/ gebrakan-jokowi-basuki/read/xml/2013/01/03/16080226/Ini.10.Berita.Kompas.com. Paling.Banyak.Dikomentari.Tahun.2012. 63. Author’s interview with Taufik Mihardja, 15 December 2014. 64. Author’s interview with Rikard Bagun, 17 December 2014. 65. Retno Wulandari, Media Darling ala Jokowi: Mejadi sosok yang disukai media (Kompas Gramedia, Jakarta, 2014). 66. Brian Loader and Dan Mercea, ‘Networked Democracy? Social Media Innovations and Participatory Politics’, Information, Communication, and Society 14, 6 (2011), 757–769. 67. Lim, ‘Many Clicks but Few Sticks’. 68. Amri Mahbub, ‘Middle Class Most Influential in Presidential Election: Observer’, Tempo Online, 4 January 2014, accessed 20 January 2015, http://en.tempo. co/read/news/2014/01/04/057542140/Middle-Class-Most-Influential-in-PresidentialElection-Observer-. Figures are from Prapancha Research regarding the ‘2014

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Prediction on Indonesia’s Political, Social, and Economic Conditions’. The research was based on conversations on social media and five news portals in Indonesia in 2013. 69. Fahri Amirullah, S. Komp, Yani Nurhadryani and S. Si, ‘Campaign 2.0: An Analyse of the Utilization Social Network Sites of Political Parties in Indonesia’, ICASSIS 2013 working paper, ISBN 978–979–1421–19–5, 243–248. 70. Andrew Thornley, ‘Indonesia’s Social Media Elections’, Asia Foundation, 2 April 2014, accessed 20 January 2015, http://asiafoundation.org/in-asia/2014/04/02/ indonesias-social-media-elections/. 71. Indikator Politik national survey of January 2014 had 46.3% of respondents ‘not know’ or prefer ‘not to answer’ who they would choose as president. 72. Indikator Politik national survey of January 2014 showed that, under the age of 25, confidence in political information Internet and social media (65%) was broadly similar with confidence in newspapers (69%), television (70%) and radio (57%). For the generation aged 41–55 there was quite stark difference between confidence in the Internet and social media (48%) compared with newspapers (63%), television (70%) and radio (73%). 73. For example Jokowi’s own media advisor, Karim Raslan wrote this in ‘Ceritalah: Indonesia’s Race of a Lifetime’, The Jakarta Globe, 9 July 2014, accessed 12 November 2016, http://jakartaglobe.id/opinion/ceritalah-indonesiasrace-lifetime/. See also ‘Mahasiswa dan Alumni Harvard Dukung Jokowi-JK’, IndonesiaSatu, 4 July 2014, accessed 12 November 2016, http://indonesiasatu.kompas. com/read/2014/07/04/15415481/mahasiswa.dan.alumni.harvard.dukung.jokowi-jk. 74. ‘Megawati: Jokowi adalah Petugas Partai’, Detik.com, 14 May 2014, accessed 12 November 2016, http://news.detik.com/berita/2582611/megawati-jokowi-adalahpetugas-partai. 75. See Adi Noegroho, ‘Hybrid: Dari Avatar sampai Pesan Ramadan’, in Desy Bachir et al. Kampanye: Voter Generated Content (Creative Circle Indonesia, Gramedia, 2015), 66. 76. Desy Bachir et al. Kampanye: Voter Generated Content, Creative Circle Indonesia (Gramedia, 2015). 77. Michael Bachelard, ‘Silence of the Polls as Prabowo Pulls ahead in Jakarta Race’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 25 June 2014, accessed 13 November 2016, http://www.smh.com.au/world/silence-of-the-polls-as-prabowo-pulls-ahead-injakarta-race-20140625-zslof.html. 78. Yayan Sopyani Al Hadi, ‘Fadli Zon bantah Gerindra Gunakan Konsultan Asing Untuk Prabowo’, RMOL.com, 29 March 2014, accessed 6 June 2016, http://www.rmol.co/read/2014/03/29/149115/Fadli-Zon-Bantah-Gerindra-GunakanKonsultan-Asing-untuk-Prabowo-. 79. Rob Allyn, ‘Every Vote Must Be Counted, Every Voice Must Be Heard’, New Mandala, 16 July 2014, accessed 14 May 2016, http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/ newmandala/2014/07/16/every-vote-must-be-counted-every-voice-must-be-heard/. 80. Fadli Zon, personal interview, Jakarta, 2015. 81. Iswara N. Raditya, Ibnu Aziz and Muhammad Aref Rahmat, [Bukan] Obor Rakyat (Media Pressindo, 2014), 118. 82. Liam Gammon and Ross Tapsell, ‘Field Notes on a Jokowi Campaign’, New Mandala, 4 July 2014, accessed 13 May 2016, http://www.newmandala.org/notes-onthe-chaotic-jokowi-campaign/.



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83. ‘Pengamat: Kesamaan Pola Kampanye Hitam Terhadap Jokowi dan Obama’, Republika.co.id, 5 July 2014, accessed 13 November 2016, http://www.republika. co.id/berita/pemilu/hot-politic/14/07/05/n87jf4-pengamat-kesamaan-pola-kampanyehitam-terhadap-jokowi-dan-obama. 84. Ibid. See also Mietzner, ‘Reinventing Asian Populism’. 85. Indikator Politik exit poll data, July 2014. Data provided to the author by Burhannudin Muhtadi. 86. In one Indikator Politik poll of January 2014, over 50% of people surveyed under 25 voted for Jokowi, while only 10.8% voted for Prabowo, the next highest in the list of candidates. 87. On Facebook, Prabowo had over 7.2 million followers, and Jokowi had 2.9 million. On one Twitter handle, Jokowi had 1.6 million followers (despite tweeting only 927 times) while Prabowo had around 950,000 followers with over 8,000 tweets. 88. Allyn, ‘Every Vote Must Be Counted’. 89. Jeffrey Winters, Oligarchy (Cambridge University Press, 2011). 90. Greg Fealy, ‘Indonesian Politics: Seeking Change amid Graft and Intolerance’, in ISEAS Year in Review: Indonesia (ISEAS, Singapore, 2012), 7. 91. Aspinall, ‘Popular Agency and Interests in Indonesia’s Democratic Transition and Consolidation’, 119. 92. Mietzner, ‘Oligarchs, Politicians, and Activists’, 18. 93. Mietzner, ‘Reinventing Asian Populism’, 61. 94. Ross Tapsell, ‘Indonesia’s Media Oligarchy and the Jokowi Phenomenon’, Indonesia 99 (April 2015), 29–42. 95. There was also Jari Ungu (Purple Finger), Perludem’s API Pemilu and Bersih 2014 (Clean 2014). It has been argued that these online social movements during the 2014 elections ‘show that citizens are sharing knowledge, information, and expertise, and often form allies with mainstream media and journalists to guard their democracy’. Inaya Rakhmani, ‘Technology for Transparency’, New Mandala, 21 July 2014, accessed 20 January 2015, http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/newmandala/2014/07/21/ technology-for-transparency/. 96. Edward Aspinall, ‘Oligarchic Populism: Prabowo Subianto’s Challenge to Indonesian Democracy’, Indonesia 99 (April 2015), 1. 97. Aspinall and Mietzner, ‘Prabowo’s Game Plan’. 98. Ainun Najib, skype interview, August 2015. The conversation began with Andrian Kurniadi and Felix (Google California). 99. Ibid. 100. Ross Tapsell, ‘Anti-Democratic? Prabowo’s Response’, New Mandala, 1 July 2016, accessed 12 November 2016, http://www.newmandala.org/anti-democratic-pra bowos-response/. 101. Dewi Fortuna Anwar, ‘Yudhoyono’s Legacy: An Insider’s View’, in Edward Aspinall, Marcus Mietzner and Dirk Tomsa (eds.), The Yudhoyono Presidency: Indonesia’s Decade of Stability and Stagnation (ISEAS, Singapore, 2015), 28. 102. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, personal interview, Canberra, April 2016. 103. Ibid. 104. Ibid. 105. See ‘Dalam Bayang-Bayang Paloh’, Tempo, 24–30 November 2014.

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106. Burhanuddin Muhtadi, ‘Jokowi’s First Year: A Weak President Caught between Reform and Oligarchic Politics’, Bulletin of Economic Studies 51, 3 (2015), 350. 107. See ‘Dilema Jokowi: Siapa yang selama ini mempengaruhi kebijakan-kebijakan Presiden?’, Tempo special edition, 26 October–1 November 2015. 108. Joe Cochrane, ‘Governor of Jakarta Bucks Indonesian Party Politics’, New York Times, 4 June 2016, accessed 6 June 2016, available at http://www.nytimes. com/2016/06/05/world/asia/indonesia-jakarta-governor-basuki-ahok.html?_r=1. 109. Aspinall, ‘Popular Agency and Interests’, 106. 110. Manuel Castells, Communication Power (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2009); Nick Couldry and James Curran (eds.), Contesting Media Power: Alternative Media in a Networked World (Rowman and Littlefield, 2003). 111. Castells, Networks of Outrage and Hope, 9. 112. Ibid.

Chapter 5

Digital ecosystems

While counter-oligarchic forces exist, it is crucial to examine the extent to which oligarchic power can be challenged by digital media. The previous chapter argued that digital media are being used for activist purposes in Indonesia, both individually and collectively. This chapter examines the inherent limits of counter-oligarchic activism. As Manuel Castells argues, ‘gatekeepers’ such as corporate media owners and government still wield considerable power, because they have successfully adapted to the digital world.1 The first part of this chapter explains the emerging field of study of the political economy of participatory media and the creation of larger, more networked digital media ‘ecosystems’ which include the digital economy. This does not mean that digital media will become a place solely for economic and political elites in Indonesia, but I do argue that their power will be further entrenched as other industries become incorporated into ‘the digital’. A large section of this chapter examines the increased role of the state in limiting the space for individual citizens online. Ultimately, a more ‘networked’ digital society presents significant challenges for individuals to push for reforms via new technologies. EMERGING DIGITAL ECOSYSTEMS This chapter outlines the environment in which counter-oligarchic forces operate. It explains an evolving digital ecosystem, where media companies first began to invest in citizen journalism sites, then social media platforms and more recently to chatting applications which now proliferate due to the arrival of the smartphone. I then explain how these apps are 125

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central to e-commerce sites, and the digital economy – an increasingly networked landscape of media content, services, products and lifestyles. Digital media platforms are increasingly part of oligarchic businesses, and this has implications as to whether counter-oligarchic forces succeed or fail. As we have heard in the previous chapter, Indonesia’s media landscape is being transformed by the increasingly participatory way in which young Indonesians use new media platforms, including microblogging, chatting applications, social media and more. Because of the shifting consumption of news and information, media companies are including participatory sites and applications in their growing business portfolios. Spurred by changes to the industry from social media sites created from 2006 digital conglomerates began purchasing new participatory media platforms, or creating replicas within their own companies. Next I outline a few prominent examples of participatory media sites within digital conglomerates, before turning to a more complex and current ecosystem. Kompas Gramedia became a pioneer of citizen journalism in 2008 through its establishment of kompasiana (www.kompasiana.com). Kompasiana started as a space forum for journalists to write more about the stories they cover, given the limited amount of space in the print newspaper, but it was adapted to include articles by non-journalists who had stories to tell.2 Users upload photos through Flickr and Twitpic, and videos through YouTube. Material is usually uploaded to kompasiana without edits, although there are moderators who are notified by keyword programmes which identify possible inappropriate content. Kompasiana’s founder Pepih Nugraha said his site had 2.8 million visitors per month in 2015, and employed 30 staff, including social media analysis programmers, as well as content and community editors.3 Kompasiana was so successful that representatives from numerous international media companies visited Nugraha to scout whether he had found a way to drive more readers to citizen journalism sites. Other media companies emulated the Kompasiana model within their own companies. Examples include Tempo Group’s Indonesiana.com, Bakrie Group’s Vivalog.com and Emtek’s Citizen6. While Kompasiana bloggers do produce quality and unique forms of citizen journalism, overall, its bloggers tend to be mostly writing opinion or commentaries of existing media content, rather than providing alternative reporting of events.4 Nevertheless, some important stories have originated in Kompasiana. In 2010, a Kompasiana blogger, Blindie Lee, exposed Taiwan’s banning of an Indonesian noodle company, Indomie. The noodles contained preservatives typically used for cosmetics rather than for food.5 In 2014 Kompasiana revealed that Anggito Abimanyu, university professor of economics and business, and director general of the Religious Affairs Ministry, plagiarised



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an article in kompas.com, and as a result he stepped down.6 As the previous chapter showed, participatory media sites such as Kompasiana are increasingly part of the multi-platform news ‘cycle’. If a post receives a significant amount of ‘hits’ or ‘shares’ on social media, it can enter the cycle of online, television or print newspaper news. An increasing part of a journalist’s professional practice is to follow up on stories which originate on social media platforms. Kompasiana is one of the most successful initiatives in this space in Indonesia. In both these examples, the original information was published by a citizen on the Kompasiana site, which prompted mainstream media reportage of the story. But because sites like Kompasiana are linked to the larger Kompas Gramedia digital conglomerate, they are beholden to intervention within these corporate business structures. One example was a Kompasiana blog post about First Lady Ani Yudhoyono by Ninoy Karundeng in 2013. Karundeng claimed to be publishing a letter from a villager displaced by the Mount Sinabung eruption, which insinuated that the First Lady was more concerned with her Instagram account than with assisting the villagers.7 Because it was widely shared on social media, Kompas.com editors picked up the story, as did KompasTV. In response, palace staff called Kompas print editors and demanded it be taken down on the grounds it was incorrect and defamatory. Kompas print staff alerted Kompasiana chief editor Pepih Nugraha, and the story was removed.8 Nugraha said he accepted the decision, and he would continue the practice of taking down stories if Kompas editors are concerned with the content. ‘If the Kompas editors want it down I let them take it down. We are part of the Kompas Group so that’s only fair. We were told to delete the article so we did’, he said.9 Since that time, authors have complained that they have had to wait for long periods as articles go through a stricter moderation process,10 while other Kompasiana staff claimed that Kompas media distanced themselves from their site much more after this situation. This Kompasiana example leads us to question whether the incorporation of citizen-generated content into digital conglomerates reduces the capacity for ordinary citizens to have their views heard through mainstream media. The concept of ‘citizen journalism’ in the mainstream media may quickly become a cliché because the process is subject to clawback via elite media structures. Media companies are aware that citizens wish to participate more readily with media in the digital era. How they channel individual participatory media urges will be important in determining how the citizen journalism space develops. For example, in Singapore, the site Stomp is part of the government-owned Singapore Press Holdings. It has been able to attract attention from both users and advertisers, in part because it has one of the region’s biggest publishers behind it.11 The site allows Singaporeans to write their own stories, but much of the content remains non-political, and certainly

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not content which regularly or critically questions the Singapore state or its authorities. Stomp is a participatory media site where ‘entertainment and consumer values are promoted, but not the kind of civic participation or deliberation that would stimulate a democratic awakening’.12 However, in Indonesia the multi-oligarchic nature of politics and the media will see a more open space for commentary than in restrictive regimes like Singapore’s, and Indonesians have become used to expressing their fervent opinions online. Yet profit-driven digital conglomerates are fast establishing participatory media sites as part of their conglomerate business model. If social media and blogging sites are reduced to a communication product moderated and massaged by big media companies with political agendas, the ability of social media to become a powerful tool for citizens to produce and disseminate information critical of these companies or their owners will be nullified. The next phase in the building of a digital ecosystem began around 2012, with investments in social media sites and chatting applications. While global social networking sites Facebook and Twitter remain incredibly popular in Indonesia, the success of other sites such as Path, Line, KakaoTalk, KapanLagi, WeChat and others within Southeast Asian communities encouraged national media companies to invest in locally popular participatory media platforms. If new media companies are serious about taking advantage of a burgeoning Indonesian market, they must customise their products for local users, something which global companies find more difficult.13 One early success story in Indonesia is the social networking site Path. Because it is culturally appropriate in Indonesia to add people as ‘friends’ on Facebook whom you do not know personally, Indonesians often have over 1,000 Facebook friends. Their Facebook feed is full of information from people they do not really know. Facebook also became a marketplace with users spamming their pages with an effort to promote goods and services. Path, created in 2010 in the US Silicon Valley but without much success globally, limited the amount of ‘friends’ a member could add to his or her site to onehundred and fifty. The site demanded a certain ruthlessness that could ease the conscience of users who were forced to reject random ‘friend requests’. As a result of its exclusivity, it burst onto the scene in Indonesia in 2012, despite failing almost everywhere else around the world. Indonesia’s four million Path users contribute to one-third of the social media site’s monthly traffic.14 In 2013, the Bakrie Group decided to invest USD 25 million in Path,15 a further sign that media moguls were honing in on participatory media platforms. The company’s digital media arm is led by Aburizal’s 37-year-old son, Anindya, who said it was an investment he started with his ‘buddies from Stanford [University]’.16 He said in 2015: ‘Path is an interesting approach because they ask: why can’t Indonesia be the key for Southeast Asia and



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Southeast Asia be the key for our expansion’.17 He said the main reason for investing in Path was to ‘leverage the success of Path to other assets’ in the Bakrie business, and to include social media within Visi Media Asia portfolio, given the increasing importance of social media platforms in disseminating news. There was some concern among netizens that the Bakrie Group was going to leverage the social media site to promote Aburizal’s tilt for president in 2014, but this did not eventuate. Rather, Path became a crucial place for the creation of political memes, whereby Indonesians would google a relevant image and add text to create a humorous depiction of current affairs. Often these memes appear within minutes of a political event or news story. In 2015, Path was sold to Korean digital company KakaoTalk, but it remains a prominent fixture in the Indonesian social media landscape. Smartphone messenger applications are becoming ubiquitous in Indonesia. These sites use over-the-top (OTT) technology which enables communication via the internet for free, rather than through satellite phones. Messenger applications like WhatsApp, Line, WeChat and Blackberry Messenger (BBM) are highly popular in Asia and are usurping the power of established telecommunications companies in the region. Chat groups are increasingly important ways in which Indonesian prod-users create and disseminate information, including political discussion. Information via a personalised WhatsApp group, for example, can often seem more credible to users than mainstream media content.18 Messenger sites are also crucial to the future of any digital ecosystem because of their potential to connect consumers to businesses. In a further sign of changes within the industry, in 2016 Facebook (which is a parent company to both WhatsApp and Instagram) announced plans to develop its Messenger into a commerce-oriented ecosystem. As Mark Zuckerberg explained through his development of Facebook Messenger platforms, rather than consumers installing a new application on their phone to message a business, they can do so simply through Facebook. ‘We think that you should be able to message a business in the same way you message a friend’, Zuckerberg said.19 News companies are able to send a personalised, ‘daily digest of stories’ into the messenger platform. Consumers can even send questions and comments to news companies to receive more information from their news bot service, which is powered by artificial intelligence. In chapter three I described digital media executives describing their business models as ‘ecosystems’, which included gaming, ticketing, events, e-commerce and much more. The term ‘ecosystem’ is a common word uttered by Indonesian news executives, used generally to describe the increased linkages between media companies and other digital business ventures. Ultimately, the aim of these digital conglomerates is to be the number one site used by Indonesians to purchase goods and services online, search for

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news, contact their friends via social media and other platforms, and all associated online interactivities. WeChat is a Chinese-owned messenger service. Its director, Benny Ho, describes the strategy in this way: Every day, most people only use five to seven apps. You don’t want a lot of apps because they use up a lot of storage. Most people have one messenger app, one or two social media apps, one entertainment or music app and one news app or RSS feed. Beyond these it is hard to gain a presence on the mobile phone. Perhaps this will change, but for now, you need to be one of them. You have to create a product that people find invaluable to use.20

If Ho is right, and most people will use only a handful of phone applications on a daily basis, further conglomeration of the digital media realm is likely as companies strive to be connected to one of these daily applications. Mergers, partnerships, formal business linkages and purchases are all being utilised to enable this conglomeration into a ‘digital ecosystem’. In 2011 Hary Tanoesoedibjo became the local partner for WeChat.21 In an interview with the author in Jakarta, Tanoesoedibjo explained why he invested in WeChat: The one media that MNC didn’t have was social media. The option was to start our own, or to merge. Tencent [WeChat’s Chinese investment holding company] proposed a joint venture as they were trying to get into the market here. All media of MNC will support this new company. Our programs will have official WeChat accounts and our programs will promote WeChat on them. For example, during Ramadan, traffic is bad, people can spread news on WeChat and we can announce this through our news programs. This is user generated content, and it is all just starting out.22

Benny Ho says that partnering with Hary Tanoesoedibjo’s MNC group ‘gives local insight as MNC media assets helps us get to the user market’.23 WeChat Indonesia plans to become more than an online messenger service, and aims to compete with Facebook and other sites to be the most popular ‘social’ application on your mobile phone. There will be a ‘live’ feed where users can post photos and videos, find ‘friends’ and have a new interface which updates the latest news. Ultimately, the aim of digital conglomerates is to centralise their digital services through one mobile phone application: news, transport, banking, sports, local merchants and much more. In 2016, the Sariaatmadjas’ conglomerate Emtek invested in the fledgling BBM company. They said: ‘The deal will give BBM users access to Emtek content, and Emtek the opportunity to build an eco-system that combines messaging, social media, content, entertainment and – arguably the biggest prize – e-commerce, a sector that is growing as



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quickly in Indonesia as anywhere in Southeast Asia’.24 This purchase shows how instant messaging is one aspect of the larger digital ‘ecosystem’. In their inception, messaging applications were a cheaper and more reliable way to contact a friend, and to form messenger group conversations. Now, they have quickly become central to a digital media company, as consumers use these messenger sites for all sorts of online activities, including, for example, to connect to news sites online. Conglomerates can use digital media companies to cross-promote and exclusively sell their other products and services. Of course, it is central to a financially successful business model for digital media to be able to sell the ‘data’ it generates from subscribers. While the term ‘big data’ has been described as ‘something of a buzzword’, the potential for collection and use of digital communications connects state, corporate and other interests more closely.25 In Indonesia, traditional polling institutes are threatened by companies who develop complex algorithms to measure social media ‘sentiment’, and claim they are more accurate in predicting election outcomes.26 Researchers, too, have seen the potential for ‘big data’ to provide empirical evidence for studies on Indonesian society, including the way elites interact with each other on social media accounts.27 As this ‘big data’ becomes more crucial to government and industry decision-making, the power of those companies who control the data grows. Furthermore, the way in which participatory media companies utilise their data within their companies also has significant consequences for the production and distribution of news and information. For example, there has been considerable debate about Facebook’s changes in its algorithms, meaning publishers will have to pay for traffic. As one online writer surmised: ‘Facebook is a media force unlike anything we’ve seen. It controls not just the viability of individual media and marketing business, but also the primary way many people across the world get their news and stay informed’.28 While the potential of citizen journalism to be identified by journalists and integrated into the mainstream media realm remains, if citizens require significant funds in order to expand audience reach, the emancipatory role of participatory media is reduced. While the previous chapter discussed the potential of new media technologies to influence political and social change, in this chapter it is evident that participatory media are now part of the broader media political economy, and, in turn, other industries and fields. Does this help or hinder media oligarchs? Can citizens take advantage of this emerging ecosystem? On the one hand, financially solid industries are threatened by ‘digital disruption’. For example, telecommunications providers are threatened by OTP internet messenger services like WeChat and WhatsApp. Even Indonesia’s banks – pillars of wealth for Indonesia’s oligarchs – are threatened by evolving digital media ‘ecosystems’. Because Social media and messaging

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companies are now in the small cash transfer market, they now have potential to move further into the banking and finance industry through consumers who do not have a credit history.29 Ride-sharing companies like Uber and Go-Jek report that they are a media company, not a transport company. Airbnb, which facilitates accommodation services, argues that it should be seen as a media company similar to Facebook and Instagram.30 Meanwhile, Facebook says it is a technology company, not a media company, because it does not produce original content. These companies might make these claims to avoid various regulations, but it shows the shifting definition of what a ‘media’ company is, and how capital is shifting in the digital era. On the other hand, conglomeration of all industries is happening, as the ‘digital’ is incorporated into other services, businesses and industries. Digitalisation is allowing large corporations to redesign people’s engagement with media.31 Henry Jenkins predicted in 2004 that ‘we are entering an era where media will be everywhere and we will use all kinds of media in relation to each other’.32 Media companies are no longer predominantly content providers, but, rather, digitalisation has facilitated the convergence of other industries, to allow for an increasingly networked linkage between the corporate world and the production of media content. In Indonesia, most e-commerce and digital ventures have connected themselves with digital conglomerates.33 Thus, the conglomeration seen in the digital media industry is likely to be replicated in other industries. Digitalisation has the potential to enable oligopolistic control over the economic landscape of goods and services online or, more broadly, all aspects of the corporate ‘digital marketplace’. Digital conglomerates which began as media companies are staking their ground for the digital economy. Dystopian scholars have argued that rather than a proliferation of new start-ups challenging big companies, digitalisation allows for large conglomerates to extend their reach over a market-driven, privatised, e-commerce and advertiser-financed system.34 As one report noted of Indonesia, ‘one-by-one, the archipelago’s largest conglomerates announced their foray into the digital economy, drawing on massive resources, international networks, and brick-and-mortar infrastructure’.35 The Indonesian e-commerce industry was regulated to prevent foreign ownership, and put on the negative investment list in 2013 for not allowing foreigners on shareholder registers. Very quickly, there was a heavy concentration of e-commerce companies within the largest families of Indonesia. In November 2014, the Sariaatmadjas invested in Bukalapak, PropertyGuru, Kudo, Hijup and BoboBobo. That same month the Bakrie group invested in Path, Qraved, YesBoss and MBDC Media. In mid-2015 the Riadys invested in GrabTaxi, HappyFresh, Bridestory and Munchery.36 Thus, the political economy of digital networks will be a central area of contestation between oligarchs and citizens in the future, in Indonesia and elsewhere.



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Global ecosystems The emerging digital ecosystem does not mean Indonesian national digital conglomerates are free from serious competition. Global digital companies, in particular Facebook and Google, are challenging local market dominance. Google’s global advertising revenue in the June quarter of 2016 was USD 19.14 billion.37 More than 1.7 billion people use Facebook each month, with 1.1 billion accessing the platform each day. In the second quarter of 2016, Facebook reported advertising revenues of USD 6.2 billion worldwide.38 One author has even described the twenty-first century as ‘the new Google century’.39 Only 4 of the top 15 visited websites in Indonesia are locally owned.40 The most popular online sites in Indonesia are Google, Yahoo, Facebook and Twitter. In 2016, Indonesia’s tax office stated that total advertising revenue for the online industry was USD 830 million, with Google and Facebook accounting for around 70% of that total.41 Indonesian policy-makers and media owners argue that these global sites are hurting the country’s economy by taking domestic media and advertising revenues from local companies. These global companies pay few taxes domestically. In 2016 the Indonesian tax office claimed Google Indonesia paid less than 0.1% of the total income and value-added taxes it owed the previous year, and suggested they have amassed USD 440 million in unpaid taxes for 2015 alone.42 This pressure on global digital conglomerates is encouraged by media elites, who are generally looking for protectionist policies in order to keep their advertising revenues high. At the same time, they also apply for tax amnesties for their own companies.43 Regional digital conglomerates are also investing in the Indonesian market. In April 2015, the popular Indonesian citizen blog site kapanlagi. com was bought by state-owned Singaporean conglomerate Temasek Press Holdings.44 Shaun Snow, CEO of MediaCorp (a subsidiary of Temasek’s), emphasised the business direction of the partnership when he stated that: ‘Indonesia has a rapidly growing cohort of digital users and the opportunities for Kapan Lagi Network are tremendous’ where the deal ‘presents great synergies, riding on flourishing people and business ties between Singapore and Indonesia’.45 A second example is Korea’s Daum Kakao acquiring Path in 2015. In 2015, Path’s owners were looking to sell the entire company, and naturally targeted owners of Indonesia’s digital conglomerates, given the site’s success in Indonesia. The Bakrie Group, Sariaatmadja (Emtek) and Hary Tanoesoedibjo (MNC) were all in discussions, but Korean giant KakaoTalk secured the deal.46 These purchases showed how regional conglomerates see a burgeoning Indonesian e-commerce market as crucial to their business expansion.

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The future is in partnerships between the local and global. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, when global media players CNN, Time Warner and others threatened the existence of national media companies, Indonesian conglomerates survived through government regulation which limited the entry of large global media companies unless they partnered with a domestic media company. Similar rules exist today which enforce global–local partnerships. CNN and CNBC’s current arrangement with digital conglomerate TransCorp is one example mentioned earlier in this book. While partnerships vary in scale, there are already occurring for some global digital giants. One recent example is VICE media’s announcement of its entrance to Indonesia in 2016 which involves multi-platform partnerships with JawaPos TV and Google ‘that will bring linear and digital programming to the country’.47 It is broadcast in both English and Indonesian languages. In mid-2016, iFlix Indonesia was announced, which partners with the Sariaatmadjas’ Emtek group, along with the state-owned telco Telkom. Tech in Asia reported that because Netflix did not set up a similar partnership prior to its launch, it was banned from all of Telkom’s internet pipes, including its mobile network Telkomsel.48 Twitter and Facebook are also looking to partner with media companies. Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, when he officially announced the opening of the Jakarta office in March 2015, said he had been meeting with numerous Indonesian media companies, discussing the possibility of content sharing.49 Earlier that month, Facebook had announced a content-sharing arrangement with The New York Times, BuzzFeed and others where the news sites began to post articles directly to Facebook.50 Thus, the media content landscape is forging ahead through global–national partnerships, where global digital companies continue to expand their reach in partnership with a major national, digital conglomerate. Global–local partnerships are an increasing trend worldwide. Dan Schiller argues that the ‘global media system’ includes ‘an unprecedented array of (mainly new) regional and local producers and distributors . . . but [is] dominated by a handful of giant enterprises – diversified entertainment conglomerates’.51 Many scholars argued that this was an inevitable result from the internal contradictions in market economics, or the ‘paradox of capitalism’: intensified competition results in less competition in the long run.52 Indonesia is a highly relevant case study to examine these trends because of the reduction in competition nationally, along with the threat of further conglomeration spurred by global companies. ‘New media giants’ such as Facebook, Google and Twitter could lead to the ‘the withering away of “mass media” ’, as Couldry states, whereby ‘the leading commercial players are arguably today not programme makers, news agencies of film



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companies, but Google (including Youtube, which they own), Facebook and Apple’.53 Many global media companies which aimed to gain a foothold in the Indonesian-language media market have failed and were abandoned, such as Bloomberg TV and The Wall Street Journal. Other sites like Rappler (based in the Philippines), The Guardian, Huffington Post and VICE media are all starting out in Indonesia, wooed by the large numbers of traffic Indonesians bring to digital media sites. If they are forced to ally themselves with digital conglomerates, they are less likely to cover controversial stories which may affect business and political interests of the owners of these companies. Furthermore, the more control conglomerates have over this emerging digital ecosystem, the less likely counter-oligarchic messages can flourish. THE STATE The environment in which counter-oligarchic forces challenge elites is shaped by the state, and it is to this issue of state regulation and control that this chapter now turns. I argue that the Indonesian state often supports the interests of big capital and digital conglomerates, and cracks down upon dissenting voices via digital media platforms. Thus, the state has adopted a bipolar approach to digital-era regulation and laws: weak in hindering media oligarchs, yet showing efficiency and strength in cracking down on netizens. The section titled ‘The state and media oligarchs’ argues that in the digital era, the Indonesian government has done little to negate the process of oligopolistic control of the media industry. This might suggest that the state has minimal impact on how power is exerted in the digital era, but this is not the case. The state remains crucial to determining how digitalisation enlivens the political agency of particular groups within Indonesian society. The group most benefitting from the actions of the state are media owners, rather than individual citizens. The section titled ‘The state and netizens’ explains the rising crackdowns on dissent online and in social media. It argues that the state often hinders the autonomy of individual dissenters. This increasingly harsh online environment has serious potential to disempower individual citizens who collectively use digital media platforms to challenge elite controls and decisions. However, it is also important to stress the shifting nature of regulatory policies in the digital era. Everywhere around the world, governments are still coming to terms with regulatory challenges that digitalisation brings, where policies are ‘still unfolding, with no pre-determined direction’.54 Like

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elsewhere in the world, Indonesian government policies change depending on presidents, ministers and the varying timbre of voices exerting pressure.55 While regulation around digitalisation is not linear, scholars of political economy generally look to explain ‘what kinds of state policy interventions are made and on whose behalf’.56 Following this approach, this section analyses what has happened in the regulatory environment in Indonesia largely under the Yudhoyono administration, and provides some direction for future scholarship and policies. I argue that the Indonesian government has taken a standard neoliberal approach to regulation of mass media: dismantling public service media, while simultaneously relaxing regulations on media ownership. At the same time, the Indonesian state is moving towards greater crackdowns of individual citizens through various new laws. The state’s role as ‘gatekeeper’ ultimately reduces the autonomy of counter-oligarchic forces. The state and media oligarchs Earlier in this book, I argued that the state has been effective in regulating conglomeration of the media industry, but also that it had assisted the growth of a media oligopoly.57 The lack of clear and effective government policies over the media is the subject of much debate in Indonesia, where scholars and NGOs have called for clearer regulations enforcing ‘neutrality of content’ and ‘limits to the intervention of owners’,58 yet it seems the government is reluctant to introduce policies which might upset influential media oligarchs. This argument is summarised by the former Jakarta Post chief editor Meidyatama Suryodiningrat: Close links between politics, business and the media have enabled media conglomerates to circumvent national laws aimed at limiting monopolies of information. For example, the requirement forcing private stations not to broadcast ‘nationally’ and instead rely on a network system with locally based affiliates, has been suspended for nearly a decade. The 2002 Broadcasting Law’s Principle of diversity of ownership has been only sporadically enforced, with questionable mergers and acquisitions allowed to proceed.59

What do media owners want from the state? Clearly, they want minimal intervention into their own businesses. They feel that their businesses should be allowed to grow in any way they see fit. For example, Erick Thohir said he ‘didn’t see any point’ to cross-media ownership laws, because in a multi-platform era ownership laws are obsolete. Besides, he argues ‘now if you want to start your own You-Tube channel, you can. You can create your own media through social media’.60 Thus, as citizens produce their own content, owners argue that everyone is in some way a media owner in the



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digital era, and that there should not be restrictions on anyone surrounding cross-media ownership laws, which they see as outdated. Media owners and CEOs generally believe that government regulators hinder innovation within the industry. BeritaSatu’s Sachin Gopalan explains that innovation in digital media ‘will happen faster in the private sector because there is an incentive to be ahead of the game because of competition. It’s in our interests to be first in the market’.61 Jawa Pos Group’s Azrul Ananda is even less circumspect when he said state regulators and people who criticise media business models do so only because they are ‘failures in the media industry’.62 Thus, a key argument from digital conglomerates is that regulations often hinder business growth and innovation. This approach is understandable from a business perspective, but in the digital era to date, when the Indonesian government has intervened, it has generally done so to suit media owners’ interests. Chapter three has explained the policies around digital television, where the potential for a greater diversity of television stations has been negated due to the government policies of issuing digital television ‘multiplexer’ licences, all of which were awarded to large conglomerates. Meanwhile, in early 2016 Netflix was blocked on the grounds that the company had failed to comply with national legislation on multimedia content (reported widely as failing to cut out pornographic content), but at the same time a different government body said Netflix had not complied with a law requiring foreign companies operating in Indonesia to establish a local entity.63 Whether the reasons were justified or not, there is little doubt that online streaming sites like Netflix are a significant threat to pay-TV subscriptions, from which many of Indonesia’s largest media conglomerates are currently making profits. Many media owners would like to see Netflix and other global competitors permanently blocked in Indonesia. To further illustrate how government policies in the digital era have assisted media oligarchs, let’s look at the example of public broadcasting in Indonesia, which is described as ‘dying’ and needing ‘revitalisation’.64 If Indonesia’s media industry is increasingly part of a pro-business digital ecosystem, an independent, fearless, public media could provide a serious alternative to privately owned digital conglomerates; a taxpayer-funded space to comment on and criticise the business and political interests of media oligarchs and to drive ‘bottom-up’ citizen-driven counter-oligarchic agendas. Indonesia does not have a robust, independent and fearless public broadcaster in the digital era. In countries such as the United Kingdom (the BBC), Australia (the ABC) and Japan (NHK), a nationwide public broadcaster produces news and information across a variety of platforms, including the internet. In Australia, for example, the ABC has three digital television stations, a 24-hour news station which can be live-streamed online, hundreds of local radio stations also

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available online, as well as a growing online news and information presence through abc.net.au. But as the very public battle between Western public ‘broadcasters’ and the Murdoch family shows, a strong national television broadcaster is a threat to the power of media moguls. Moguls like the Murdochs and others argue that significant investment in public media is a waste of taxpayer funds, because it is a service that private industry is already providing. In a speech in 2009, James Murdoch said the BBC was ‘throttling’ the market, using taxpayer funds to dominate the industry, which prevents competitors from launching or expanding their own services, particularly online, where private media were needing to charge users to access their content.65 As public broadcasters themselves become digital multi-platform services flush with state funds, private media owners argue that it is creating unfair competition. Travel to any provincial city in Indonesia and one of the largest buildings will likely be the state-owned television media (TVRI). Many of these buildings represent a relic of the expensive infrastructure that went into spreading the singular message of Suharto’s authoritarian regime. In Kota Ambon, 2000 kilometres from Jakarta, TVRI’s is a grandiose six-storey building built at the top of the city’s hill. Yet like most TVRI buildings today, only around half the building is being used, paint strips off the walls and some equipment and furniture are around 20 years old.66 After the demise of the New Order, rather than pursuing a model of independent and critical public broadcasting, Indonesia’s successive governments chose to ignore TVRI, and the organisation languishes towards irrelevance. TVRI remains full of ‘organisational problems, ranging from limited resources and a large, mainly unmotivated staff to an extensive, but mainly outdated technical infrastructure’.67 In 2015, funds from the government in its budget to TVRI were delayed, and some staff did not received salaries for a month.68 TVRI contributes little to meeting audience demands for news and information, nor in providing innovative and diverse content.69 Most local TVRI stations struggle to broadcast more than three hours of local content per day, and TVRI consistently fails to reach over 1.5% of audience share.70 The yearly budget of TVRI in 2013 was USD 74 million, while in that same year the yearly budget for a private television company averaged USD 172.8 million.71 But even a simple injection of funds would not be sufficient. An entire rejuvenation of the public broadcasting vision and mission is required. TVRI continues to be run by New Order managers and editors who pursue the promotion of state-sponsored messages and Pancasila principles. An older generation of Indonesian audiences still remember TVRI as the prime engine of New Order government messages, and indeed many Indonesian government and TVRI staff still see public service news as the mouthpiece of the



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president. Meanwhile, many younger Indonesians have grown up with little fondness for public broadcasting, and are more accustomed to the entertaining television news provided by TVOne and MetroTV. Public broadcasting in radio still plays an important role in Indonesia. Radio Republik Indonesia, with over 1,000 radio stations, is in some rural communities the only service by which citizens can access news.72 But in keeping with trends of convergent multi-platform content delivery of the digital era, RRI and TVRI are scheduled to merge as a single entity by 2019, to become RTRI (Radio & Television Republic of Indonesia). RRI employees are concerned this merger will weaken the broadcasters, rather than strengthen them, because they fear further reduction in funds and job losses. Indonesia’s state-owned news service, Antara, is also adjusting to digital technologies. It has predominantly become an online news service, and in 2016 Jokowi approached Jakarta Post chief editor Meidyatama Suryodiningrat to become Antara’s new chief editor. The move signalled some improvement in the service, but the site is still lagging behind detik.com and kompas. com in the online news realm, in terms of both audience and advertising revenue. As a recent content-sharing arrangement between TVRI and privately owned Indonesia Channel shows, Indonesia’s public television station seems heading towards more public–private partnerships.73 The failure to strengthen public broadcasting is but one example of weak or ineffective government policies around mainstream media pluralism. As Andrew Rosser argues regarding the politics of health care in Indonesia, business groups pursue their interests by employing their structural power over the state through ‘exploiting the instrumental linkages that many of them have to leading political figures as a result of family, friendship or political party connections’.74 There has not been a revision or a new law passed on media ownership since 2002. Media oligarchs with political connections have legislators who are part of their political parties. As one report noted, sometimes policy decisions are so advantageous for both the government and owners that it is unclear whether ‘such intervention in the coverage of the media is purely the will of the owners or is requested by the government’.75 The political agency of media oligarchs has not been hindered by government regulation. If anything, decisions surrounding media pluralism and digital technology regulation are mostly determined by the wishes of media elites and owners, rather than through broader public consensus. The state and netizens The significant freedom Indonesians enjoy online, in particular through social media platforms, is the subject of fervent discussion about how the state should manage this realm. There are very legitimate concerns around

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the rise of hate speech, racial discrimination online and the spread of terrorist propaganda.76 Yet posts that are defamatory or slanderous garner similar attention from the government and elites. The state can be firm and ruthless when cracking down on some individual citizens who express controversial views online through criminal defamation laws. This was overtly played out in the Indonesian Constitutional Court in 2009, when the attorney general’s representatives argued that the ‘borderless’ nature of the internet meant that insults and defamation perpetrated online had a higher impact, and hence required harsher penalties, an argument which the Court accepted in upholding draconian laws.77 Media oligarchs interviewed for this research expressed concerns about the unregulated ‘power’ of digital media, and the lack of responsibility and accountability of online and social media commentary. They argue that the masses are easily convinced by online misinformation and too easily persuaded by inflammatory messages distributed through grass-roots networks. Erick Thohir of Mahaka Group, said that ‘Everyone can spread rumours now, and it is not always factual, and there more trial by media of public individuals. I am conscious of this myself’.78 Aburizal Bakrie believes that there are ‘No regulations. No responsibility, just freedom’ online, and that ‘very strict’ regulation of the social media was needed to encourage a realm ‘that is not only free but has to have responsibility’.79 Yudhoyono said it was important as a public official that when he is being slandered, he should be able to bring those to justice, and reveal the truth, because ‘people may believe that slander or rumour, and say that I should not rule the people’. Elsewhere it is argued that Yudhoyono’s lack of leadership in the area of online freedoms was indicative of his general approach to human rights – that they were of secondary importance to him.80 There has been an avalanche of cases where Indonesian citizens have been subjected to legal prosecution, and in some cases had their lives ruined, for posting their views online. In 2008 the Indonesian government introduced the Electronic Transactions and Information Law (ITE Law), to crack down on online communications that intimidate or defame another person. The maximum sentence is six years in prison and fines of up to Rp. 1 billion (USD 76000). Netizens must also keep in mind other laws, such as blasphemy and defamation, which could see them arrested. Data from ELSAM and SAFENET document the rise in these cases from 2008: there were only two cases in 2009, but grew to forty-one in 2014.81 The data show that state officials were the second-largest group of complainants, reporting approximately 36.47% of all ITE law cases. Defendants included activists, lawyers, researchers and journalists.82 However, a common way for authorities to become aware of such cases was reporting done by other citizens. Husbands report wives, neighbours report each other, social media ‘friends’ report someone who writes a controversial post. Every main participatory



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media platform has been the subject of an ITE case at some point, including Facebook, Twitter, Path, WhatsApp and Line, a message that no platform is exempt from authorities. In their 2016 ‘Freedom on the Net’ report, Freedom House found Indonesia remains ‘partly free’, outlining a string of cases where individuals were prosecuted, including noting that the national police reported monitoring and investigating 180,000 social media account holders for posting alleged ‘hate speech’.83 One of the most high-profile cases of government crackdown on social media posts involved a young Sumatran civil servant, Alexander Aan, who started a Facebook page for atheists in 2012, stating openly that ‘God does not exist’. After an outcry from local religious groups, Aan was arrested for blasphemy and sentenced to jail for two and a half years, and fined over USD 10,000. This was the first time someone had been jailed in Indonesia for self-identifying as an atheist and sharing that view.84 The case did lead to significant debate in Indonesia, including petitions on Change.org and other digital activist initiatives, but Aan was ultimately forced to serve his full sentence. Another high-profile example was Florence Sihombing’s 2015 post on Path, where she vented her frustrations about petrol queues and life in Yogyakarta. Translated to English, Sihombing wrote on her Path account: ‘How can Indonesia progress? You all want to be enslaved by the situation. STUPID all the way down to 7 generations. And Jogja want to be enslaved by Pertamina Monopoli. No wonder POOR’. Fuelled by extensive coverage in Indonesia’s multi-platform news, Sihombing quickly attracted staunch criticism online by those who saw her as arrogant, rude and in need of punishment. Some netizens in Yogyakarta even circulated her number plate and other personal details. Rather than appeal for calm, authorities charged Sihombing under defamation and ‘inciting hatred’, fined her Rp. 10 million and sentenced her to two months in jail. The case was notable because it did not involve defamatory comments against an individual, a religious or ethnic group, or even a social group. Sihombing was considered to have incited hatred over her comments about an entire city, whereas, in fact, defamatory commentary online was directed at her in response. The Sihombing and Aan cases are prominent examples, but the ITE law is the subject of concern for many NGOs, human rights activists and indeed many netizens, because it is leading to harsh crackdowns and ‘arbitrary abuse’.85 At the same time, the mainstream media are rarely held to account for inciting anger around these cases. As we have heard earlier, Papua is the exception to the rule of Indonesia’s largely free press environment, with the region described as an ‘ “Achilles heel” for a democratising Indonesia’.86 Its media landscape remains far more controlled than elsewhere in Indonesia. The province continues to face problems of ‘fraudulent and disruptive regional elections’, severe restrictions on freedom of expression such as peaceful protests and the continual arrests and interrogation

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of political prisoners by police.87 The region’s local media operates in a ‘subnational authoritarian’ environment, where criticism of security forces or the local government is difficult.88 Individual citizens are targeted for reporting critical comments about the government online, and subjected to threats, intimidation and monitoring from security officials. Surveillance of separatists has been made easier by the rise of digital media platforms as authorities monitor when activities are planned and who is participating online. While social media such as YouTube videos create opportunities for ‘counter-oligarchic’ forces and other dissidents in Papua, they also bring huge risks, as citizens expose themselves through online communications to a state that can readily infiltrate social media, track down activists and impose severe sanctions.89 All around the world, governments are using digital technology to enhance their ability to monitor citizens online, and in most countries advocacy groups are concerned with the increased power of the state in doing so. Indonesia is no exception. In another clear example of increasing pressure to censor online content, in 2016 the Indonesian government officials pressured the digital media company Line to remove stickers depicting LGBTI themes from its online store.90 Even Jokowi has changed his stance somewhat on the role of social media users since becoming president. In the initial stages of his presidency, Jokowi stated that Indonesia was now operating in an ‘era of openness’ which involved him being regularly briefed on social media sentiment, and he even arranged a meeting with Kompasiana bloggers in late 2015.91 A year later, he lamented some social media commentaries as causing a ‘loss of identity’ and degrading long-held ‘Islamic values’ in Indonesia.92 If Castells is right and citizens are subverting traditional practices of communication by ‘occupying the medium and creating the message’,93 in Indonesia this occupation is making the government and elites nervous, and they are using the arms of the state to reduce this practice. Whether state action encourages further subversion in the digital realm or creates an environment of self-censorship and timidity online remains to be seen. Whatever path Indonesia’s netizens take, the role of the state as ‘gatekeeper’ will be a crucial issue for scholars examining the overall state of freedom of expression and diversity of opinion in the archipelago. CONCLUSION This chapter has shown the extent to which oligarchic power can be challenged by digital media netizens, and the inherent limits of these forms of activism because of the political economy of digital media. Indonesian citizens are able to massage and manipulate certain messages and pursue activist agendas but economically and politically find it challenging to exert larger



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controls over the digital realm. As Castells notes, there is indeed ‘unequal competition’ between citizens’ ‘low-quality’ videos, blogs and social media posts, and the professionalised media production in part powered by the apparatus of the state. What, then, would a threat to oligarchic dominance of the media look like? This chapter has shown that oligarchic dominance is weakened by the following: a) Diverse distribution of capital around digital businesses b) Strong and independent public broadcaster c) Vibrant online public sphere which allows for citizenry to shape media content and speak directly and openly to and about elites This chapter argues that the state and oligarchs are pushing Indonesia in a direction of increasingly centralised control. Indonesia’s media landscape is looking more concentrated around ‘digital ecosystems’, and the state is increasingly creating and enforcing laws which hinder freedom of expression online. This may sound highly pessimistic towards the potential for reforms via digital media, but it is worth reiterating here how counter-oligarchic media movements have worked to date. As Fligstein and McAdam explain through their term ‘strategic action fields’, counter-power is often presented ‘on a situational basis, as shifting collections of actors come to define new issues and concerns as salient’.94 In 2014 the counter-oligarchic movement was focused predominantly on the presidential elections. In 2015 the main issue was again a battle between the police and the anti-corruption commission, specifically around the potential appointment of a new police chief under new president Jokowi. In late 2016 and early 2017, serious contestation revolved around the Chinese-Christian Jakarta governor known as ‘Ahok’. As well as being Jakarta-centric, these ‘strategic action fields’ are political, public and easily digestible by a wider audience. Rather than see these examples in isolation as successful or unsuccessful attempts at counter-power, this chapter has provided an analytical structure of the digital realm in which counter-oligarchic media are operating, highlighting the divergent paths by which elites and netizens are taking Indonesia. NOTES 1. Manuel Castells, Communication Power (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2009). 2. Pepih Nugraha, Kompasiana: etalase warga biasa (Kompas Gramedia, Jakarta, 2012). 3. Pepih Nugraha, personal interview, Jakarta, 2015.

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4. See Andina Dwifatma (2014). ‘Capital City’s Flooding in the Political Year: Media Critics Typology by Kompasiana Bloggers as the Fifth Estate’, Master’s Thesis in Communication Studies: University of Indonesia, Paper Presented at the Murdoch Asia Institute ‘Digital Indonesia’ Workshop, 19 September 2016. 5. ‘Indomie dirazia depkes taiwan’, Kompas.com, 11 October 2010, accessed 21 March 2015, http://bisniskeuangan.kompas.com/read/2010/10/11/09130294/Indo mie.Dirazia.Depkes.Taiwan. 6. Luqman Hakim, ‘Anggito Abimanyu mundur dari UGM setalah dituduh plagiat’, 17 February 2014, accessed 12 September 2016, http://www.antaranews.com/ berita/419472/anggito-abimanyu-mundur-dari-ugm-setelah-dituduh-plagiat. 7. ‘Surat Terbuka Instagram untuk Ani Yudhoyono dari Vita Sinaga Hutagalung Korban Sinabung’, Kompasiana, 20 January 2014, updated 24 June 2015, accessed 15 March 2016, http://www.kompasiana.com/rrachmaniar/surat-terbukainstagram-untuk-ani-yudhoyono-dari-vita-sinaga-hutagalung-korban-sinabung_ 5528316a6ea834376a8b45a3. 8. Muammar Fikrie, ‘Alasan dihapusnya surat untuk Ibu Ani dari Kompasiana’, 20 January 2014, accessed 15 March 2015, https://beritagar.id/artikel/berita/alasandihapusnya-surat-untuk-ibu-ani-dari-kompasiana-11537. 9. Pepih Nugraha, interview, Jakarta, 2015. 10. Ninoy N. Karundeng, ‘Artikel tentang Ahok di Kompasiana Dimoderasi’, 13 March 2016, accessed 1 July 2016, http://www.kompasiana.com/ninoy/artikeltentang-ahok-di-kompasiana-dimoderasi_56e59489197b61911b7a147e. 11. See Cherian George and Reeta Raman, ‘When Big Media Meet “We” Media in Singapore’, Australian Journalism Review 30, 2 (2008), 61–73. 12. Ibid. 13. Ben Bland, ‘Asian Mobile Chat Apps Challenge Western Dominance’, Financial Times, 1 August 2013. 14. Leighton Cosseboom, ‘Path’s Foothold in Indonesia Isn’t a Kiss of Death, but a Chance for a Comeback’, Tech in Asia, 31 October 2014, accessed 12 November 2016, https://www.techinasia.com/dave-morin-path-indonesia. 15. Path had around 23 million customers at the time of the purchase, most of which were in Indonesia. Anindya Bakrie, in an interview with the author, said it was a ‘little democracy of shareholders’ with himself and his ‘buddies’ from Stanford who invested in around 7–8% of the company. 16. Anindya Bakrie, personal interview, Jakarta, 14 March 2015. 17. Ibid. 18. For example, see Jewel Topsfield and Karuni Rompies, ‘Anger Intensified over Fake Vaccine Scandal Rocking Indonesia’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 19 July 2016, accessed 12 November 2016, http://www.smh.com.au/world/anger-intensifiesover-fake-vaccine-scandal-rocking-indonesia-20160719-gq8zw9.html. 19. Tom Limongello, ‘The Future of Messenger’, TechCrunch, 6 April 2016, accessed 28 November 2016, https://techcrunch.com/2015/04/06/the-future-of-messenger/. 20. Benny Ho, personal interview, Jakarta, 2015. 21. ‘The 40 Richest’, Forbes Indonesia 3, 12 (December 2012), 56. Tencent has partnerships in Italy and South Africa as well as Indonesia. 22. Hary Tanoesoedibjo, personal interview, Jakarta, 2015.



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23. Benny Ho, personal interview, Jakarta, 2015. 24. ‘Indonesian Media Giant Emtek Acquires Licences for Blackberry Social Messaging App BBM’, Mumbrella, 1 June 2016, accessed 13 August 2016, http:// www.mumbrella.asia/2016/06/indonesian-media-giant-emtek-acquires-bbmconsumer-business/. 25. Jonathan Hardy, The Political Economy of the Media: An Introduction (Routledge, London, 2014), 212. 26. Ross Tapsell, ‘Polls Apart’, New Mandala, 23 April 2014, accessed 28 November 2016, http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/news-events/all-stories/polls-apart-0. 27. Jacqueline Hicks, ‘Old Questions, New Techniques: A Research Note on the Computational Identification of Political Elites’, Comparative Sociology 14, 3 (2015), 386–401. 28. Joe Lazauskas, ‘7 Ways Facebook’s Big Algorithm Change Will Affect Marketers and Publishers’, 29 June 2016, accessed 23 September 2016, https://contently. com/strategist/2016/06/29/7-ways-facebooks-big-algorithm-change-will-affectmarketers-and-publishers/. 29. Tapsell, ‘Polls Apart’. 30. Jennifer Faul, ‘Airbnb Wants to Be a Media Company as It Calls on Agencies to Treat It Like a Brand-Building Channel’, The Drum, 16 June 2016, accessed 12 September 2016, http://www.thedrum.com/news/2016/06/20/airbnb-wants-bemedia-company-it-calls-agencies-treat-it-brand-building-channel. 31. Dwyer, Media Convergence, 41. 32. Henry Jenkins, ‘The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence’, International Journal of Cultural Studies 7, 1 (2004), 35–37. 33. Bede Moore, ‘The Indonesian E-commerce Industry, a Start-Up Approach’, in Edwin Jurriens and Ross Tapsell (eds), Digital Indonesia: Challenges and Opportunities of the Digital Revolution, ISEAS, Singapore, 2017. 34. Hardy, The Political Economy of the Media, 109. 35. Nadine Freischlad, ‘How Indonesia’s Richest Families Run the Ecommerce Industry’, Tech in Asia, 9 March 2016, accessed 15 November 2016, https://www. techinasia.com/indonesias-richest-families-run-indonesias-ecommerce-industry. 36. Bede Moore, Presentation at the ANU Indonesia Update 2016, ‘Digital Indonesia’, 17 September 2016, accessed 15 November 2016, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=f0HeVOAVRls. 37. Harriet Taylor, ‘Google (and Facebook) Are Getting Almost All Digital Ad Money’, CNBC online, 28 July 2016, accessed 3 August 2016, http://www.cnbc. com/2016/07/28/google-and-facebook-are-getting-almost-all-digital-ad-money.html. 38. ‘Facebook Revenues Increase to $6.4 Billion in Q2 2016’, Mediaweek, 28 July 2016, accessed 30 July 2016, https://www.mediaweek.com.au/facebook-reve nues-increase-to-6-4b-in-q2-2016/. 39. Jeff Jarvis, What Would Google Do? (Collins Business, 2009). 40. Merlyna Lim, ‘Many Clicks but Few Sticks: Social Media Activism in Indonesia’, Journal of Contemporary Asia 43, 6 (2013), 6. 41. Gayatri Suroyo and Eveline Danubrata, ‘Google May Face Indonesian Tax Bill of More Than $US400 Million for 2015’, The Canberra Times, 19 September  2016. 42. Suroyo and Danubrata, ‘Google May Face Indonesian Tax Bill’.

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43. ‘Billionaires Aburizal Bakrie and Prajogo Seek Tax Amnesty’, The Jakarta Post, 29 September 2016, accessed 16 November 2016, http://www.thejakartapost. com/news/2016/09/29/billionaires-aburizal-and-prajogo-seek-tax-amnesty.htm. 44. ‘MediaCorp acquired a 52% equity stake in the KLN group, which owns several Indonesian web portals, including kapanlagi.com’. 45. Shiwen Yap, ‘Singapore’s MediaCorp Acquires a Strategic 52% Stake in Indonesia’s KLN’, Deal Street Asia, 5 May 2015, accessed 12 September 2016, http://www.dealstreetasia.com/stories/singapores-mediacorp-acquires-a-strategic-52stake-in-indonesias-kln-5982/. 46. Jon Russell, ‘What Is Daum Kakao and Why Did It Buy Path?’, Tech Crunch, 29 May 2015, accessed 12 October 2016, http://techcrunch.com/2015/05/29/ what-is-daum-kakao-and-why-did-it-buy-path/. 47. ‘VICE Media Announces Launch of VICE Indonesia’, Retail Asia, 6 November 2016, accessed 15 November 2016, http://www.retailnews.asia/vice-media-announ ces-launch-vice-indonesia/. 48. Nadine Freischlad, ‘Netflix Competitor iFlix Is Now Available in Indonesia’, Tech in Asia, 16 June 2016, accessed 17 November 2016, https://www.techinasia. com/iflix-launch-indonesia-official. 49. Dick Costolo, press conference, Jakarta, March 2015. 50. Julia Greenberg, ‘Buzzfeed and NY Times Will Now Publish Stories on Facebook’, Wired, 13 May 2015, accessed 3 August 2016, http://www.wired.com/ 2015/05/big-publishers-will-now-post-stories-straight-facebook/. 51. Dan Schiller, ‘Digital Capitalism: A Status Report on the Corporate Commonwealth of Information’, in A. Valdivia (ed.), A Companion to Media Studies (Blackwell, Oxford, 2006), 140. 52. David Demers and Debra Merskin, ‘Corporate News Structure and the Managerial Revolution’, The Journal of Media Economics 13, 2 (2000), 48. 53. Nick Couldry, Media Society, World: Social Theory and Digital Media Practice (Polity, Cambridge, 2012), 14. 54. Esteve Sanz, ‘The Television Industry’, in Guiditta De Prato, Esteve Sanz and Jean Paul Simon (eds.), Digital Media Worlds: The New Economy of the Media (Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2014). 55. The minister of communications’ backflip on banning of Islamic websites in March 2015. Another example is the suggestion that foreign journalists should have a visa to all provincial areas of Indonesia, a suggestion rejected by Jokowi, forcing the relevant minister who suggested it to publicly apologise. 56. Hardy, The Political Economy of the Media, 179–181. 57. Indonesia has numerous government regulators which oversee the media industry. The Ministry of Communications and Information regulates the sector, with independent institutions, the Indonesian Broadcasting Commission (Komisi Penyiaran Indonesia, or KPI) to oversee checks and balances on ethics and defamation surrounding television and radio, and the Indonesian Press Council (Dewan Pers) overseeing the print media in this regard. There is no specific regulator of online media, although the Press Council has increasingly felt the need to delve into this realm, given the convergence of print and online news.



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58. Amir Effendi Siregar, Mengawal demokratisasi Media: menolak konsentrasi, membangun keberagaman (Kompas Gramedia, Jakarta 2014), 41. See also Remotivi, www.remotivi.co.id. 59. ‘Indonesia’, Oxford Business Review (2012), 271. 60. Erick Thohir, personal interview, Jakarta, 2012. 61. Sachin Gopalan, personal interview, Jakarta, 2015. 62. Azrul Ananda, personal interview Surabaya, 2010. 63. Freedom House, Freedom on the Net 2016, 12 November 2016, accessed 17 November 2016, https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/2016/indonesia. 64. Yanuar Nugroho, Andriani Putri and Shita Laksmi, ‘Mapping the landscape of the media industry in contemporary Indonesia. Report series. Engaging media, empowering society: Assessing media policy and governance in Indonesia through the lens of citizens’ rights’, Research collaboration of Center for Innovation Policy and Governance and HIVOS Regional Office Southeast Asia, funded by Ford Foundation, Jakarta, March 2012, accessed 6 April 2012 96. 65. James Robinson, ‘James Murdoch Hits Out at BBC and Regulators at Edinburgh TV Festival’, The Guardian, 29 August 2009, accessed 28 November 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/media/2009/aug/28/james-murdoch-bbcmactaggart-edinburgh-tv-festival. 66. See David Hill’s account of TVRI in Manado, South Sulawesi in ‘Media and Politics in Regional Indonesia’, in Krishna Sen and Terence Lee (eds.), Political Regimes and the media in Asia (Routledge, London 2008), 193. 67. Ed Hollander, Leen d’Haenens and Jo Bardoel, ‘Television Performance in Indonesia: Steering between Civil Society, State and Market’, Asian Journal of Communication 19, 1 (2009), 39–55. 68. Open Society Foundations Report, ‘Mapping Digital Media in Indonesia’, 2012, accessed April 2016, https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/reports/mappingdigital-media-indonesia, 29. 69. TVRI aired 4 new digital television stations in August 2009 and had plans to establish 28 local stations with digital production systems. 70. Merlyna Lim, ‘The League of Thirteen: Media Concentration in Indonesia’, 2012, accessed 15 September 2013, http://www.public.asu.edu/~mlim4/files/Lim_ IndoMediaOwnership_2012.pdf. 71. Open Society Report, ‘Mapping Digital Media: Indonesia’, 68. 72. 1.27 trillion per year from government. 73. Indonesia Channel announced this partnership via its Facebook page in ‘The Indonesia Channel signed a deal with national broadcaster TVRI on 6 November 2015, to provide an initial two (2) hours of programming everyday. Beginning in December, viewers throughout Indonesia will view TIC’s signature programs and news from 5 p.m.-7 p.m. TVRI Director of Business and Development Adam Bachtiar and TIC CEO Dalton Tanonaka shake on the first-of-its-kind agreement’. See ‘Indonesia Channel’, Facebook page, 6 November 2015, accessed 1 December 2016, https://www.facebook.com/theindonesiachanneltv/. 74. Andrew Rosser, ‘Realising Free Health Care for the Poor in Indonesia: The Politics of Illegal Fees’, Journal of Contemporary Asia 42, 2 (2012), 255–275.

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75. Open Society Report, ‘Mapping Digital Media. . .’, 83. 76. See Nava Nuraniyah, ‘Online Extremism: The Advent of Encrypted Private Chat Groups’, in Edwin Jurriens and Ross Tapsell (eds.), Digital Indonesia: Challenges and Opportunities of the Digital Revolution, ISEAS, Singapore, 2017. 77. Dominic Berger, ‘Human Rights and Yudhoyono’s Test of History’, in Aspinall, Mietzner and Tomsa (eds.), The Yudhoyono Presidency: Indonesia’s Decade of Stability and Stagnation (ISEAS, Singapore, 2014), 234. 78. Erick Thohir, personal interview, Jakarta, 2012. 79. Aburizal Bakrie, personal interview, Jakarta 2015. 80. Berger, ‘Human Rights and Yudhoyono’s Test of History’, 234. 81. Data obtained at Dialog ‘Kermedekaan berekspresi di media social Indonesia’, Hotel Aryaduta, Jakarta, February 2015. See also ELSAM, Buku saku Kebebasan berekspresi di Internet, ELSAM, Jakarta Selatan, 2013. 82. SAFENET 2015, see also Usman Hamid’s book chapter ‘State Crackdowns Online’, in Jurriens and Tapsell (eds.), Digital Indonesia: Challenges and Opportunities of the Digital Revolution, ISEAS, Singapore, 2017. 83. Ibid. 84. Aan’s case is noted in 2012 Report on Discrimination against Atheists, Humanists and the Non-Religious. Available online at http://americanhumanist.org/ news/details/2012-09-2012-report-on-discrimination-against-atheists-human. 85. Bambang Muryanto, ‘ITE Law Increasingly Threatens Press Freedom’, The Jakarta Post, 17 November 2014, accessed 12 September 2016, http://www.thejakar tapost.com/news/2014/11/17/ite-law-increasingly-threatens-press-freedom.html. 86. Richard Chauvel, ‘Policy Failure and Political Impasse: Papua and Jakarta a Decade after the ‘Papuan Spring’, in Peter King, Jim Elmslie and Camellia Webb-Gannon (eds.), Comprehending West Papua (Centre of Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, 2011), 105. 87. Muridan S. Widjojo, ‘Melanesia in Review: Issues and Events, 2013: Papua’, The Contemporary Pacific 26, 2 (2014), 506–516. See also www.papuansbehindbars.org. 88. Ross Tapsell, ‘The Media and Subnational Authoritarianism in Papua’, Southeast Asia Research 23, 3 (2015). 89. Hamid, ‘State Crackdowns Online’. 90. Freedom House, ‘Freedom on the Net 2016’, 12 November 2016, accessed 17 November 2016, https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/2016/indonesia. 91. Uni Lubis, ‘Jokowi, netizen dan suara publik’, Rappler, 16 December 2015, accessed 14 November 2016, http://www.rappler.com/indonesia/116137jokowi,-netizen-dan-suara-publik. 92. ‘Jokowi: sedih membaca komentar di Medsos dan Media online’, Liputan6, 19 September 2016, accessed 15 November 2016, http://news.liputan6.com/ read/2605645/jokowi-sedih-membaca-komentar-di-medsos-dan-media-online. 93. Ibid. 94. Neil Fligstein and Doug McAdam, A Theory of Fields, Oxford University Press, Oxford, New York, 2012.

Conclusion

A DIVERGENT TRAJECTORY After The Simpsons parodied readers of The Economist in 2004, it has become a cliché to describe Indonesia as a country at a ‘crossroads’.1 Undeterred, The Economist used the term in September 2013, describing it as ‘worryingly apposite’.2 The 2014 presidential candidates were ‘firmly wedded to the old governing elites’, but, The Economist argued, Jokowi ‘looks very different’. The Western media continued to push stark polarisations as Jokowi assumed the presidency. Time magazine’s Star Wars–themed front-page photo of Jokowi entitled ‘A New Hope’ in the aftermath of his election victory was one example, which led to an eventual response from The Economist as oligarchs asserted their power over the new president: ‘The Empire Strikes Back: the old guard is out to construct the next president’s ambitious plans for reforms’, the magazine opined.3 The dominant message from mainstream media saw Jokowi portrayed as the antecedent to oligarchs; an outsider who challenges existing power structures of a country riddled with corruption, money politics and poverty. As we have noted throughout this book, the scholarly debate between oligarchs and pluralists is more nuanced than the one presented by Western newsmagazines, but a dichotomy exists there too. For oligarchy theorists, Indonesian society remains controlled by the Suharto-era cronies, while new faces are drawn into the same predatory practices of the old ones. Alternatively, pluralists see change occurring through popular movements which shake up oligarchic power structures. As Aspinall has argued, Indonesia is undergoing a ‘near revolutionary shift’ as populist reformers with credible track records of effective governance are being pushed by ‘bottom-up’ 149

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forces.4 These forces are changing the way in which Indonesian society operates, even if the process is occurring slowly. A dichotomy also exists in many studies of new, digital technologies. New media technologies are often one-sided and categorised as ‘techno-optimistic’ or ‘techno-pessimistic’ myths. The ‘techno-pessimists’ present arguments of continuing or growing power of big media in the digital era, and how the emancipatory predictions around the role of the internet and other new technologies are a ‘delusion’. Alternatively, techno-optimists explain how new media ‘revolutions’ can overthrow dictatorial regimes, usurp messages of mainstream media moguls and present a new way forward for society in an increasingly deliberative and transparent political environment. Given the state of both the fields of digital media and Indonesian studies, it seems logical for this book to now conclude where it stands on such dichotomies. However, a conclusion stating a ‘winner’ between oligarchs and techno-pessimists, or citizens and techno-optimists, would ultimately be reductive. Rather, this book has shown how both groups are empowered by digital technologies, and argues that digital technologies exemplify the current state of Indonesian politics and society, one which is being pulled in two directions. Both oligarchs and a subsection of Indonesian citizens are being empowered by new media technologies, but, as we have noted in previous chapters, this empowerment occurs in markedly different ways. The result is a divergent Indonesian society. Both groups are empowered by new digital technologies, but they are pulling Indonesia in different directions. This conclusion explains where this divergence is taking Indonesia. OLIGARCHS: A DIFFERENT DIRECTION OR MORE OF THE SAME? This book has examined the impact of digitalisation on the production of news and information in Indonesia, arguing that digitalisation has empowered oligarchic power within the mainstream media. How did this occur, despite the emancipatory potential of the internet? In Indonesia, as elsewhere, during the later decades of the twentieth century, there were vociferous and persistent calls for greater media diversity in order to break up corporate gains in oligopolistic markets.5 Initially, it seemed like the new technologies of the internet would threaten the power of wealthy, politically connected media moguls. In many ways they did, as those moguls who relied on printed newspapers as their flagship news platform saw profits and circulation decline rapidly. Detik.com and other pioneer online news sites challenged the establishment media’s market dominance and power. Indonesia’s private media companies were being re-imagined in the destabilised post-reformasi



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environment. The corporate media sector needed to drastically change its business models in order to keep up with the changing patterns of audiences and advertising revenues, or it risked becoming redundant. Indonesia’s media oligarchs successfully adapted. A select group of businessmen quickly managed to dominate the convergence era, consolidating much of the industry. The capitalist media in Indonesia became ‘digital conglomerates’: leaders in multi-platform news production, a process which encourages the purchasing of smaller competitors. Much of the communications infrastructure in the digital era is expensive. Smaller companies found that they did not have the capital to keep up with the digital conglomerate behemoths who have larger funds. The result is an increasingly oligopolistic media market. Put more simply: digitalisation enables big media to become bigger. Digitalisation has not enabled a diverse professional media realm to flourish in Indonesia. While there may be possibilities for niche market subscriptions to media content (e.g. to Tempo weekly magazine) a new generation of Indonesians (and other young people around the world) have grown up without paying for news and views online. This makes us wonder, who else can own a media business unless they own a large digital conglomerate? Given the difficulty of medium-sized and smaller professional media in the digital era so far, it is likely that key conglomerates will increasingly shape news and information in the country. As chapter three has shown, there are now eight large digital conglomerates, all with the same business models. Conglomeration and concentration of the media industry have occurred around Jakarta-based digital conglomerates, which are now national, monolithic behemoths. The more news production is centred around the business and politics of the capital, the more powerful media owners were in shaping nationwide coverage. This conglomeration is likely to continue as companies become not only multi-platform media companies with communications infrastructure but even larger digital ecosystems. ‘Digital media’ companies now include gaming, transport, events, commerce, accommodation, real estate and much more. While some of these cross-promotional activities occurred in the pre-digital era, a media company as we have come to know it – one which predominantly produces news and entertainment content – is shifting in the digital era. Now, media content is increasingly an arm of a company incorporating other businesses within the digital realm. Thus, digitalisation has been used to hinder the potential for a wider diversity of viewpoints enabled by the internet. As Robert McChesney argues in his study of political economy of the media in the United States: ‘The corporate media sector has spent much of the past fifteen years doing everything in its immense power to limit the openness and egalitarianism of the Internet’.6 In Indonesia, digital technologies are utilised to advance the interests of a

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select group of players. It enabled some media moguls to grow their wealth and, as the media was central to political campaigning, political power. As Anindya Bakrie said, ‘The internet shook up the Suharto cronies. The digital era will bring new ones’.7 This media conglomeration enables media moguls to become more politically powerful. Given these close links between media businesses and politics, the Indonesian mainstream media landscape is generally becoming more partisan, in no small part due to the nature of this multi-oligarchic media landscape. Market dominance of the media assists key oligarchs with not only improved financial wealth but also overt political power. When oligarch Aburizal Bakrie suggested that the media are the future of his family’s next generation, it did not just point to his family’s changing financial situation, but to the increased power of the media in the digital era. Chairul Tanjung ascended to be a key figure in the government of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, to the extent that he was helping select ministers (and indeed became the coordinating minister for economic affairs for a time). The concurrent rise of Hary Tanoesoedibjo, a key figure in the Prabowo 2014 campaign through both his financial assistance and media exposure, shows the power of digitalisation in consolidating the wealth and political power of a media owner. Tanoesoedibjo has since formed his own political party, Perindo, to advance his cause as a presidential candidate. The trend of national media oligarchs obtaining political positions is rising around the world, and is most evident in developing countries like Indonesia, where regulations are weak. But does this give media oligarchs a heightened illusion of political power? As we have heard in this book, most media owners believed they are crucial in shaping election results. They believe that citizens can be influenced by their media companies, but despite their media companies (and their best campaign attempts), many owners have not managed to become popular presidential candidates. Clearly, other influencers and forces play a role in shaping Indonesian’s views, and certainly the gateway to power is more than simply ownership of a media company. While they may not have achieved election to the highest office, national media moguls are more important figures in politics in the digital era. Of course, media moguls have been directly linked to politics well before the digital era, in Indonesia and elsewhere. Indonesian moguls Aburizal Bakrie and Surya Paloh were involved in media and politics well before smartphones were invented. However, recent trends suggest digitalisation has increased the power of these moguls. Media owners are central to any national political campaign. In this book I have given the examples of Hary Tanoesoedibjo, Chairul Tanjung and Dahlan Iskan as successful young media entrepreneurs who took advantage of new digital technologies to empower their political agency. Similar models around the world exist



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where a media owner–turned-rich businessman-turned influential politician dominates the political scene. Digitalisation has been used as a tool of media oligarchs to centralise their media companies into larger businesses. Thus, despite the hope that the internet would democratise the flow of information and bring down the hierarchical structures of media ownership power, industrial media remains a dominant paradigm in which elites exert their power. DIGITAL CITIZENRY: AN EMPOWERED MINORITY BUT EXPANDING Oligarchs are not the only group to have their political agency empowered by digitalisation. Digital media are regularly used for activist and liberationist purposes in Indonesia. In this regard, digitalisation undoubtedly benefits a section of Indonesian society that uses new media platforms as a weapon to challenge industrial media messages and to push politics and society in a different direction to ones propagated by elites. Digitalisation allows for participatory media platforms, which gives individual citizens the agency to collectively formulate powerful messages. In assessing a new convergent media environment in 2006, Henry Jenkins pondered, ‘whether the public is ready to push for greater participation or willing to settle for the same old relations to mass media’.8 Over ten years later, we can say with certainty that, in Indonesia at least, citizens have pushed for greater participation via digital media platforms. The ‘spreadability’ of digital content enables this contestation to flourish. Whether through mass-driven ‘clicks’ of news articles, social media shares, internet memes or organically produced YouTube videos, digital media can shape and usurp oligopolistic media content. Much of the ways in which citizens influence message through ‘spreadability’ include content from mainstream media sites. As the ‘Jokowi phenomenon’ showed, citizens can drive non-elite politicians to nationwide popularity, even to the highest office. Citizenry power comes not from destroying mainstream oligarchic media but, as Jenkins writes, by ‘writing over it, modifying it, amending it, expanding it, adding greater diversity of perspective, and then recirculating it, feeding it back into the mainstream media’.9 The Kawal Pemilu example shows how netizens use digital platforms to challenge the potentially corrupt election commission and usurp media oligarch messages that the voting was rigged. The Papuan independent journalism news site Tabloid Jubi is another example of a thorn in the side of elites. While their impact may vary, their very existence is testament to the kaleidoscopic digital environment which permeates Indonesian society.

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Some of these sites (e.g. Tabloid Jubi) only modify, rather than seriously challenge, elite power. Politicians are wary of negative commentary on digital media against their behaviour or policies, and regularly measure online sentiment to gauge the public’s views. Concern over social media sentiment goes right to the top, to the presidency. The emergence of the digital era has meant that first Yudhoyono, and now Jokowi, see commentary on digital media platforms as a way of measuring their performance. They may not always agree or respond to all forms of criticism, but they are clearly influenced by it. Digital media are becoming a key space for younger Indonesians with internet access to bring about rapid and meaningful change. This is in part due to the weakness of other institutions to enable citizens to bring about reforms, but also due to the ability of digital media to be ‘occupied’ by mass participation, and create a stream of voices which the government and other elites find it difficult to ignore. Given Indonesians’ highly active participation within these platforms, and their early and at times sensational success, Indonesia will continue to be a crucial site for future studies of digital citizenship and digital activism, and will no doubt be a focus site for many scholars in this field who are looking for examples where ‘networks of outrage and hope’10 flourish. This is not to say that digital media are the only key to power in Indonesia, but it has quickly become a prominent space of contestation between elites and citizens. However, at this current stage of Indonesia’s internet penetration, its netizens are of course only a select group of the Indonesian population, an ‘empowered minority’ of young, urban, middle-class citizens who see digital media as a key avenue for effecting change. Their views on how Indonesian society should operate are what permeates the digital realm, and this can disadvantage others who do not have the wealth or online literacy to enter these spaces. Those involved in Kawal Pemilu, for example, are in many ways a ‘tech-savvy bourgeoisie’, representing pockets of urban middle-class abilities. However, as internet penetration rises and technologies continue to allow for an increasingly networked society, ‘the digital’ will be inherent in the study of almost every aspect of Indonesian society. For Indonesian counter-oligarchic movements to flourish, increasing internet penetration alone is not enough. Indonesia must prioritise the teaching and learning of digital skills to expand the empowerment beyond the urban middle class. Benedict Anderson wrote in Imagined Communities that the emergence of print capitalism ‘made it possible for rapidly growing number of people to think about themselves, and to relate themselves to others, in profoundly new ways’.11 A similar conclusion can be drawn with regard to the profound change enabled by digital media. Advances in technologies are affecting



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markets, cultures, genres, audiences, businesses, security and much more. The focus of this book has been the transformations occurring in the media industry in Indonesia, and the shifting terrain of digital media production and consumption. It has shown how digital media are being used by reformers who see these technologies as enablers to challenge the status quo, and to act in ways which usurp oligarchic dominance of the political and media landscape. We are living at a time of great technological ‘disruption’ to society. A Facebook chat group led to a crowdsourcing election movement; a locally produced video on YouTube helped shape an election outcome; an online journalism site brings greater independent news from a region which has been shrouded in secrecy for decades. Collective action matters too. Taken individually, these combustible new media ‘moments’ languish towards irrelevance soon afterwards. Indeed, in five years’ time most young Indonesians will not recognise the name Prita Mulyasari. But taken as part of an evolving and sequential ‘counter-oligarchic’ media movement, these particular ‘moments’ matter. One can only ever join the dots going backwards in time. This book has at least begun to chart the dots, but others will surely follow. CONVERGENT MEDIA; DIVERGENT POWER The examples provided from seven years of empirical research conducted for this book show how new media technologies enable us to understand power structures and shifting agency of groups. The media are indeed advanced and scrutinised as ‘central generators of power’12 in Indonesian society. If it is true that ‘the media has been the site of every momentous transition in living memory’ in Indonesia,13 then the archipelago is on the brink of another momentous transition. If print capitalism brought about nationalist identity, television became the symbol of an authoritarian state and the internet ushered in democracy, what transition is digital media bringing to Indonesian society? The transition occurring may not be one of upheaval of democracy, but it is leading to rapid societal divergence. Indonesia’s multi-oligarchic media system has allowed for a far more partisan coverage of political candidates, and is now of grave concern for advocates of a free press. Twenty-four-hour news cycles and reporting driven by owners’ interests are debilitating Indonesia’s democracy. Recent debates describe this phenomenon as ‘post-truth politics’, where the contemporary media encourages dialogue which appeals more to emotions rather than facts. While social media ‘echo chambers’ play a part, partisan news coverage where ‘facts’ are second to political and business interests of the company is a significant factor.

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In chapter one we heard of a ‘paradox’ described by Carothers, where digital media allows for greater empowerment of individuals, yet democracy – a system based on individual empowerment – is experiencing weak public confidence around the world. While Prabowo did not overtly advance an argument for authoritarianism, he and his campaign material regularly implied a weak, corrupt and ineffective democratic deliberation.14 His campaign strategy was to highlight the weakness of the leadership of Yudhoyono (2004–2014), who many Indonesians believed was indecisive. However, Indonesia’s oligopolistic and highly partisan mainstream media encourage this ‘post-truth’ environment where, as Prabowo himself stated, democracy ‘makes us tired’.15 Oligarchs often use their media to attack each other, to attack their political rivals or potential threats and to push their agendas. Social media and blogs, increasingly driven by paid online campaign staffers, allow for polemic news and views to flourish. In this environment, many people regard democracy as too ‘noisy’, and complain of too much confrontation, infighting and bickering among the political elite. The previous system under Suharto seemed more ‘ordered’, both in actual structures of society and in the way the media represented them. This is not to say Indonesian society was necessarily more ‘ordered’ under Suharto. Rather, it is to say that the media play a central role in how citizens view political systems and the institutions that come with it. While Indonesia’s ‘multi-oligarchic’ media landscape is by far a better option than other state-dominant alternatives in Southeast Asia (e.g. Malaysia or Singapore), there is still cause for concern for the way in which this landscape undermines democratic institutions and processes. While Indonesian society is wonderfully diverse, this book has argued that two groups are benefitting most from digitalisation, and that the directions they are taking Indonesian society are usually very different. The direction of oligarchs is clear: use mainstream industrial media to push their individual political agendas, while at the same time attribute Indonesia’s middle-class upward mobility as being advanced by pro-business policies which ultimately benefit their own companies. When political reformers challenge their dominance, they use their mainstream media to create and highlight scandals (e.g. Sri Mulyani and ‘Bank Century’ corruption case). Meanwhile, the state is used not only as a collaborator to improve wealth for oligarchs but also to crack down on individual citizens who might question them individually (e.g. defamation) or on society as a whole to limit greater freedom of expression (e.g. the rapidly expanding electronic transaction laws). In this trajectory, inequality widens, and the forces which might nullify this (e.g. trade unions, Left-leaning political actors or a powerful and independent public broadcaster) are increasingly weakened, to the point of near non-existence.



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Although it is more difficult to pinpoint the precise motives of a kaleidoscopic digital citizenry in Indonesia, this group empowered by digitalisation is taking Indonesia in another direction. Here, citizens argue for more ‘direct democracy’ through technological advancements in crowdsourcing, social media sentiment and online public discourse. In this direction, Indonesian leaders become more populist in their decision-making. This does not necessarily mean thorough reforms (e.g. Jokowi’s decision to reinvigorate the death penalty in his first term), but it does mean leaders are more attuned to what the online citizenry say on certain issues, including revoking decisions which were highly unpopular (e.g. demoting an unpopular chief of police). The direction this group takes Indonesia is bolder and reformist, driven largely by a younger generation frustrated by slow changes to politics and governance, including a corrupt and inefficient bureaucracy. This group see new, digital technologies as the main conduit for speeding up reforms. Yet because of the nature of the digital divide in Indonesia, reforms advocated through digital technologies are more likely to be the will of the middle class. Middle-class reforms can have positives for Indonesia’s poor too, but where the two are not concurrent (e.g. policies around evictions of so-called ‘illegal’ settlers), then middle-class decisions are likely to win out in digital activism. The poor are more likely to be depicted in ways determined by the middle class rather than as drivers of change themselves. Much depends on what this emerging digital citizenry chooses to do with new digital technologies. A growing number of Indonesians are participating in online deliberations, shaping media content and lobbying to have their voices heard. As the previous chapter showed, if citizens use digital media platforms to turn on each other, such as via social media abuse or by reporting each other to authorities for speaking out on certain issues, the emancipatory potential of these digital platforms diminishes greatly. If citizens continue to use digital media to advocate for reforms and challenge elite power structures, digital media will indeed be a vehicle and venue by which change occurs. It is in this vein that I use the term ‘counter-oligarchic’ digital media. As Jenkins writes, and this is true in Indonesia as elsewhere: ‘there is nothing inevitable about the outcome. Everything is up for grabs’.16 The more Indonesian citizens use digital media for ‘counter-oligarchic’ purposes, the more significant transitions spurned by new media technologies might result in their favour.

NOTES 1. The Simpsons parody portrayed Homer flying business class, boasting, ‘Look at me, I’m reading The Economist! Did you know Indonesia is at a crossroads?’

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2. ‘Is Indonesia at a Crossroads’, The Economist, 22 September 2013, accessed 21 November 2016, http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2013/09/ economist-explains-11. 3. ‘The Empire Strikes Back’, The Economist, 2 October 2014, accessed 21 November 2016, http://www.economist.com/news/asia/21621874-old-guard-out-obstruct-nextpresidents-ambitious-plans-reforms-empire-strikes. 4. Edward Aspinall, ‘Popular Agency and Interests in Indonesia’s Democratic Transition and Consolidation,’ Indonesia 96 (October 2013), 102–103. 5. Jonathan Hardy, The Political Economy of the Media: An Introduction (Routledge, London, 2014), 195. 6. Robert McChesney, Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism Is Turning the Internet against Democracy (The New Press, New York, 2013) 124. 7. Anindya Bakrie, personal interview, Jakarta, 2015. 8. Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (New York University Press, New York and London, 2006), 254. 9. Ibid., 268. 10. Manuel Castells, Communication Power (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2009). 11. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (Verso, London, 1983), 36. 12. Nick Couldry and James Curran (eds.), Contesting Media Power: Alternative Media in a Networked World (Rowman and Littlefield, 2003), 3. 13. Krishna Sen, ‘Introduction: Re-Forming Media in Indonesia’s Transition to Democracy’, in Krishna Sen and David Hill (eds.), Politics and the Media in Twenty-First Century Indonesia (Routledge, London, 2011), 1. 14. See, for example, Gerindra party campaign video, ‘Mas Garuda: Waktunya Bergerak’, Mas Garuda, 2 April 2014, accessed 21 November 2016, http://www. youtube.com/watch?v=yRTtkDlNd0w. 15. Aspinall, ‘Popular Agency’, 20. 16. Jenkins, Convergence Culture, 258.

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Index

Aan, Alexander, xix, 141 activism, xx, 17, 99 – 101, 125, 142, 154, 157 advertising, 29, 39 Ahok, ix – x, 104 – 8, 112, 114, 116 – 17, 143 Allyn Rob, 110 Amien Rais, 108 Ananda, Azrul, 37, 64, 67, 84 – 86, 137 Anderson, Benedict, 2, 3, 5, 11, 18, 154 Antara, 139 ANTV (Cakrawala Andalas Televisi), 7, 15, 34, 79, 84 – 86 Arab Spring. See Middle East Asian Financial Crisis, 9, 13, 15 Aspinall, Edward, xx – xxi, 97, 113 – 14, 149 Australia, xiii, xviii, 10 Bakrie, Aburizal, 7 – 8, 15, 34, 61 – 63, 69 – 76, 79 – 80, 83 – 87, 107, 112, 114 – 16, 140, 152; family, 7, 33 – 35, 43, 63, 85 – 86 Bali, xxiii, 47 – 50 Bali Pos Group, 47 – 50 Bandung, 48, 104 Basuki Tjahaja Purnama. See Ahok BeritaSatu, 36 – 37, 39, 84, 86, 137

big data, 131 Blackberry, 17, 129 – 30 ‘black campaign’, 76, 78, 111 blogging/blogs, xviii, 17, 96, 126 – 28, 133, 142 – 43, 156 Bloomberg Indonesia, 34, 135 blusukan, 106 – 7, 110, 112 Bruns, Axel, xxv, 96, 104 business coverage, 83 – 85 Buzzfeed, 102, 134 Carothers, Thomas, xi – x, 155 cartel, 9, 61, 87 Castells, Manuel, 96, 98, 117, 125, 142 Chairul Tanjung, 13 – 14, 16, 29 – 31, 34 – 36, 65, 68 – 74, 80, 82 – 84, 102, 152 Change.org, 117, 141 China, xviii, 32, 96, 130; Chinese Indonesians, ix, x, 7, 13 – 14, 36, 42, 66, 74, 77, 111, 143; Chinese-made mobile phones, xviii, 17 citizen journalism, 25 – 26, 95, 102, 125 – 27, 131 ‘clickbait’, xvii, 100, 102 – 3, 153 CNN Indonesia, 31, 36, 69, 72, 80, 83 Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), 100, 116, 118 169

170

Index

Dahlan Iskan, 5, 16, 37 – 38, 49 – 50, 63 – 65, 68 – 69, 73 – 76, 78, 83 – 87, 111 – 12, 152 Detik, 12 – 13, 31, 35, 38, 51, 102, 108, 139, 150 Dhakidae, Daniel, 5 digital economy, xxii – xxiii, 125 – 32 Djojohadikusumo, Hashim, xvi dynasties, 84 – 86 East Timor, 10 e-commerce, xxiii, 26, 32 – 33, 37, 39, 86, 126, 129 – 33 Economist, The, 149 Emtek, 32 – 33, 126, 130, 133 – 34. See also Sariaatmadja family elections: 2004 presidential election, 61; 2009 presidential election, 66 – 67; 2014 presidential election, xii, 73 – 80 Electronic Transactions and Information Law (ITE law), 140 – 41 Facebook, xi, xviii, xix, 18, 51, 72, 95, 99 – 105, 110, 112, 115, 117, 128 – 34, 141, 155 ‘fake news’, x, 88 Global MediaCom. See MNC Group global media companies, 51, 133 – 35, 149 Go-Jek, x, 132 Gontha, Peter, 8 Google, 51, 102, 129, 133 – 34 Guardian, The, 135 Habibie, B. J., 10 Hadiz, Vedi, xv – xvi, 60 Hobart, Mark, 6 Honduras, xiv Hill, David, 9 – 10, 17, 48, 64 Huffington Post, 102, 135 India, xiv, 31, 51 Indonesian Broadcasting Commission (KPI), 47 – 48, 75

iNews, 32, 36, 49 Instagram, 115, 127, 129, 132 Internet: arrival to Indonesia, 9 – 11; penetration, x, xviii, xix, 18 – 19, 38, 41, 87, 154 Islamic Defenders Front (FPI), 12 Islamic media, 42 – 45, 76 – 77, 142, 146n Jakarta: Ahok as governor, xi – xi; election 2012, 105 – 6; media concentration in, 18, 27, 45 – 50; terrorist attacks, xx Jakarta Post, The, 36, 37, 40, 76 – 77, 136, 139 Japan, xviii, 137 Java, xix, 2, 4, 14, 16, 35, 47, 50, 68 Jawa Pos, 5, 16, 37 – 38, 63 – 65, 72, 84 – 86, 137 Jenkins, Henry, xi, xviii, 96, 132, 153, 157 Jokowi-Ahok Social Media Volunteers (JASMEV), 105 Joko Widodo or ‘Jokowi’, ix – xxi, xxv, 70, 74 – 79, 82 – 83, 86 – 87, 95, 104 – 16, 142 – 43, 149, 153 – 54, 157 Jurnal Nasional, 66, 68 Kalla, Jusuf, 67, 76 – 77, 82, 112 Katoppo, Aristides, 41 Kawal Pemilu, 95, 114 – 16, 118, 153 – 54 Kenya, xiv, 95 Kitley, Philip, 7, 15 Kompas Group, 5, 14, 16, 30, 35, 37 – 39, 41, 47 – 49, 51, 77, 102, 107 – 8, 112, 126, 139 Kompasiana, 126 – 27, 142 Laksono, Agung, 7 Lapindo mudflow, 62 – 63 Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex (LGBTI), 142 Lim, Merlyna, 10, 26, 40, 100 Line, 128 – 29



Index 171

Lippo Group. See Riady family Lombok, xxiii, 48 Malaysia, 7, 18, 97, 156 Mallarangeng, Andi, 66, 68, 72 Maluku, xxiii, 12, 50, 64 McCargo, Duncan, xiv McChesney, Robert, 26, 151 McLuhan, Marshall, 1 – 3 Media Indonesia Corp, 35 – 36. See also MetroTV; Surya Paloh MetroTV, 14 – 15, 35 – 36, 61, 65 ,  67, 70 – 71, 75 – 80, 82, 111 – 12, 139 Middle East, xi, 44, 96, 99 Mietzner, Marcus, xx – xxi, 69 – 70, 78, 107, 114 MNC Group, 14, 29, 31 – 32, 49, 75, 130. See also Tanoesoedibjo, Hary Mulyani, Sri Indrawati, 63, 156 Mulyasari, Prita, 100 – 101, 155 Murdoch, Rupert, xiii – xiv, 36, 138 Najib, Ainun, 114. See also Kawal Pemilu Naradha, Satria, 47 – 50 Netflix, 134, 137 NetTV, 47, 50 Neumann, Linn, 67 – 68 New Order government, xvi, xxi, 2, 13, 42, 60, 77; and internet, 10 – 12; and print, 5, 61; and television, 2 – 9, 138 newspapers, 2, 29, 37, 63 New York Times, The, ix, 19, 134 Nigeria, xiv Novanto, Setya, 82 Obor Rakyat, 76, 78, 111 Oetama, Jacob, 5, 14, 38 – 39 Papua, xviii, xxiii, 10 – 11, 141 – 42, 153 Path, 18, 105, 128 – 29, 132 – 33, 141 Patria, Nezar, 67, 86 Pelayan Rakyat, 76, 78, 111 Philippines, xiv, 18, 156 Pisani, Elisabeth, xix

Pohan, Ramadhan, 66, 68 political economy (of media), xi, xvii, xviv–v, 19, 25 – 26, 40, 59, 113, 125, 131 – 32, 136, 142, 151 pornography, 12 post-truth, 87 – 88, 103, 155 – 56 Prabowo Subianto, xii, xvi, xxi, 74, 76 – 79, 107, 109 – 16, 152, 156 print media, 2 – 3, 5, 9 – 11, 16 – 17, 26, 29, 32, 36 – 46, 65 – 66. See also newspapers Purbo, Onno, 17 radio, 2 – 4, 11, 17 – 18, 26 – 28, 32, 37 – 38, 41 – 42, 45, 60, 137, 139 Radio Republik Indonesia (RRI), 139 Rahardjo, Budi, 17 Rajasa, Hatta, 69, 76 Rajawali TV, 50, 82 Rappler, 51, 97, 135 RCTI (Rajawali Citra Televisi Indonesia), 7 – 8, 14, 32, 49, 79, 82 reformasi, xv, 10 – 13, 19, 31, 77, 118 regulations (of media), xv, 8, 11, 15, 47 – 50, 66, 84, 115, 132 – 34, 135 – 42, 152 Republika, 42 – 45, 102 Riady family, 36 – 37, 65 – 67, 73, 80, 84 – 86, 112, 132 Rismaharini, Tri, 63 Robison, Richard, xv – xvi, 60 Salim, Anthony, 7, 13 – 14, 65, 72 Sariaatmadja family, 32 – 33, 65 – 66, 82, 84 – 85, 130, 132 – 34 SCTV (Surya Citra Televisi), 7, 14, 32 – 33, 65, 84 Sembiring, Tifatul, 43, 46 – 47, 64 Sen, Krishna, 1, 9 – 10, 17 Sihombing, Florence, 141 Silicon Valley, 19, 128 Singapore, 31, 80, 114, 127 – 28, 133, 156 Southeast Asian media, xiii, xiv, 18, 36, 40, 45, 51, 87, 128 – 29, 131, 156

172

Index

Sondakh, Peter, 7, 47, 50, 82 South Korea, 68, 129, 133 Stomp, 127 – 28 Suharto, xxi, 4 – 13, 41, 156; family-owned media, 7, 14, 32, 50, 72 Sukarno, 3 – 4 Sukarnoputri, Megawati, ix, 64, 67, 74, 82, 109, 112, 116 Sumatra, xix, 61, 141 Surabaya media, 16, 34, 49, 62 – 65 Surya Paloh, 14 – 15, 35 – 36, 61 – 62, 70, 72 – 76, 82 – 83, 84, 87, 112 – 13, 116 Suryodiningrat, Meidyatama, 40, 136, 139 Tabloid Jubi, 153 – 54. See also Papua Tanjung, Chairul. See Chairul Tanjung Tanoesoedibjo, Hary, 14 – 15, 16, 29, 31 – 32, 47 – 48, 70, 72, 74 – 76, 79 – 82, 84, 114, 130, 133, 152 Teman Ahok, x, 117 Tempo Group, 5, 41 – 42, 47, 51, 77, 102, 116, 126, 151 television, 4 – 9: privately owned stations emerge, 13 – 15; reach, 7, 18, 45; satellite television, 4 – 9, 29 Thailand, xviii, 18, 51, 97 Thohir, Erick, 34, 42 – 44, 73, 84, 136, 140 Trans Corp, 15, 30 – 31, 47, 65, 83, 102, 134. See also Chairul Tanjung triomacan2000, 111 Trump, Donald, 19 TVOne, 34, 62, 65 ,  67, 71 – 72, 75 – 80, 85, 87, 102, 111, 139

TVRI (Television Republic Indonesia), 4, 6 – 8, 15, 46, 71, 138 – 39 twenty-four-hour news cycle, 14, 31 – 32, 34 – 36, 59, 61, 103 Twitter, xi, 18, 72, 99 – 102, 104 – 5, 110 – 12, 115 – 16, 128, 133 – 34, 141 United Kingdom, xiii, vxiii, 87, 137 United Nations, xviii United States, xiii, 19, 62, 66, 78, 99, 111, 115, 151 universities, 84 Visi Media Asia, 33 – 35, 43, 129. See also Bakrie, Aburizal: family VivaNews, 34 – 35, 67, 86, 102, 126 Wahid, Abdurrahman (‘Gus Dur’), 64 Wall Street Journal, The, 51 Wanandi, Sofjan, 77 Wardhana, Veven, 9 warnet, xviii, 10, 19 WeChat, 32, 128 – 31 Western media, xiii – xv, 9, 51, 149 WhatsApp, 129, 131, 141 Winata, Tomy, 43, 50 Winters, Jeffrey, xv – xvi, 7, 60, 87 Yudhoyono, Susilo Bambang, xii, 18, 59, 61 – 74, 79, 83 – 84, 115, 127, 136, 152 YouTube, x, xviii, 18, 43 – 44, 72, 74, 100 – 102, 104 – 5, 107, 115, 126, 135, 142, 153, 155 Zon, Fadli, 76, 110