ABSTRACT
One of the most visible changes to Indonesian public culture since the fall
of President Suharto and his ‘‘New Order’’ in May 1998 has been the
increasing diversity of the nation’s media. This chapter is an initial attempt
to examine these changes at the local level in the perimeter province of
North Sulawesi, about 2,000 kilometers from the political epicenter of Jakarta.
It explores the impact of a raft of central government policies, collectively
dubbed ‘‘de-centralization’’ or ‘‘regional autonomy,’’ in North Sulawesi and
its capital, Manado. Prior to 1998, with only rare exceptions, studies of the Indonesian media – by both Indonesian and foreign scholars – concentrated
on the national media.2 However, since the post-Suharto deregulation of the
media and the dismantling of the repressive Department of Information
which had controlled the media centrally, the most dramatic transformation
is being driven not from Jakarta but from local media enterprises.3 At its
broadest, this current study of media in North Sulawesi questions whether
the collapse of an authoritarian regime and abandonment of media controls
axiomatically produce a pluralist democratic media, or whether equally as likely is the capture of the media by particular political interests, for whom
media influence – if not control – is a valuable asset in influencing public
opinion and electoral outcomes.
