ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with an overview of early media infrastructure and policy and provides an outline of the establishment of Internet infastructure in Indonesia, divided into four sections, based on the key actors who played important roles within each overlapping period. These are the Scholars’ Period, the Hobbyists’ Period, the Bureaucrats’ Period, and the Entrepreneurs’ Period. The chapter shows how the development of information and communication technologies is affected by a range of interrelated factors, such as infrastructure, politics, and economy, geography and education levels. It argues that implementation of Internet technology and communications was intertwined with various social factors and power discourses exercised by both government and corporations. The chapter also argues that engagement with the Internet in Indonesia involves struggle, forms of appropriation, oppression, and resistance to the former regime’s effort to impose the idea of the nation using traditional media such as radio and television.
