Indonesian Religion as a Hybrid Media Space

Social Dramas in a Contested Realm

Bibliographic Data

ID19002152
AuthorsJohn Postill (RMIT University, corresponding author), Leonard Chrysostomos Epafras (0000-0002-9655-5347, Universitas Gadjah Mada)
Year2017
Volume5
Issue1-2
Pages100-123
Publication date2017-11-30
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueAsiascape Digital Asia (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2214-2304 • E-ISSN: 2214-2312
PublisherBrill (PUBLISHER • NL)
DOI10.1163/22142312-12340086
OpenAlexW2775790986
LanguageEN
Citations received10
References cited34

The popularity of social media in Indonesia, along with the rise of political Islam, is changing the ways in which people engage with religious matters in the country. In this article, we deploy post-Bourdieuan field theory to explore Indonesia’s religious domain as a ‘hybrid media space’ – a social space mediated by old and new media agents interacting to produce viralized forms of public communication. We undertake this exploration through three viral controversies, or ‘social dramas’, triggered by a perceived breach of the religious space’s order. All three dramas involved political Islamists in contention with various political actors, namely the Muslim senator Fahira Fahmi, the West Sumatran atheist Alexander Aan, and the then governor of Jakarta, ‘Ahok’. These examples shed light on the current state of Indonesia’s religious space and its multiple mediations, as well as taking field theory into new communicative and religious terrain

Geography · Indonesian · Islam · Media studies · Political science · Politics · Popularity · Private space · Public space · Realm · Social media · Sociology · Asian Studies and History · Islamic Finance and Communication · Islamic Studies and Radicalism · Law

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