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Marginalized Religious Communities in Indonesian Media: A Baseline Study

Remotivi;International Media Support (IMS) (2021), 68 pp.

Contains bibliogr. pp. 66-68

CC BY

"This study finds that the Indonesian media ecosystem is not a safe space for marginalized religions. As explained in the conclusion to the content analysis, the space given by the media for news coverage of marginalized religious groups is still very small. Although non-Islamic official religions enjoy enough coverage space, they are only ceremonial in nature. Most of the coverage is given to things like religious holidays. Even if the news coverage of Sigi was quite extensive, this was made possible by the presentation of the issue as part of a national and global discourse: terrorism. In other words, issues related to the marginalized religious groups have no inherent news value unless they are placed in the context of a “big narrative” such as “against terrorism.” This leads to the depiction of marginalized religious groups as “victims.” They tend to be treated as objects rather than subjects who can narrate their own point of view. When it comes to news consumption, the internet in Indonesia (as well as in the rest of the world) has become a crucial medium in obtaining news and information, while printed media and radio are gradually losing their relevance. Television, however, remains a popular choice for people's news consumption. The data shows that this is common across all participants regardless of religion, gender and demography. Significant differences can be seen in the utilization of the internet for marginalized and nonmarginalized religious groups. Use of social media and chat applications to find and share religious information is dominantly carried out by marginalized religious groups. For non-marginalized religious groups, even if they use the internet for this purpose, they do not abandon television as a means to access religious information. Unfortunately, the increasing trend to consume information from the internet is not supported by basic media literacy skills and knowledge." (Conclusion, page 56)