Birgit Bräuchler: Transformation der Gesellschaft durch Transformation der Medien? Vom Krieg zum Frieden in den Molukken, Ostindonesien
The rise of the new media has transformed local conflicts into global spectacles: images of conflicts from all over the world are brought right into the users’ homes, be it on TV or the Internet, in the newspaper or on the radio. Media are agents of war influencing and transforming conflicts through the way they report on them. This became extremely obvious in the Moluccas, Eastern Indonesia, where one of the most violent post-Suharto conflicts was fought out between 1999 and 2002, mainly between Christians and Muslims. The religious dichotomization of the Moluccan society was extended into the media sphere - be it print media, radio, TV or the Internet - in different ways: Firstly, the image of a ‘religious war’ was enthusiastically reproduced and enforced in the national and the local media; second, the media themselves were divided, some of them seemingly representing the Christian, some of them the Muslim party; and third, some of the people involved in the conflict on the local level even set up their own media projects (radio, leaflets, Internet), thus transforming media into weapons in the battle. This paper aims to analyse the media factor in the Moluccan conflict, but also tries to investigate the transformation of the media scene that took place after the official end of the Moluccan conflict. In general, images of conflict seem to be much easier to convey, especially on the mass media, than images of reconciliation and peace - only bad news is news. But through several peace initiatives, among others supported by the Indonesian Alliance of Independent Journalists (Aliansi Jurnalis Independen, AJI), a change took place in the Moluccas and peace journalism slowly got the upper hand. Not only the media coverage changed, but also the Moluccan media landscape as such: new print media emerged, new radio stations and a Maluku Media Centre, deliberately opting for peace journalism, organizing trainings for journalists and trying to raise a specific media awareness among the Moluccan population. The analysis of the media scene and its transformation has to be taken into account when investigating the transition from war to peace in the Moluccas in particular and the current transitional stage in a post-Suharto ‘democratising’ Indonesia in general that involves the transformation of society. The results of this paper are therefore of importance far beyond the Moluccan context.