Reception as cultural experience: Visual mass media and reception practices in outer Indonesia

This is an ethnographic case study of mass media audiences and their reception practices in an outer-island province of the Republic of Indonesia. It focuses on the reception practices by which audiences interpret media forms and programs, and the development of these interpretive patterns as cultural expression. The central theoretical problem concerns the relationship between media, culture and reception; specifically, the manner in which reception processes are structured by the cultural features of media audiences. Three forms of visual mass media, television, motion pictures, and videotape films, are examined with regard to audience practices and program interpretations. These reception patterns are analyzed as parts of a cultural matrix which links local experience with major social and political structures in Indonesia, including regional Islamic orthodoxy and the emergence of national culture. This case study compared media audiences in five sample communities located in South Kalimantan province (southeastern Borneo), including one small town and four rural villages. All are orthodox Muslim communities consisting of ethnic Banjarese, one of Indonesia\u27s cultural minorities. Research methods included extensive participant observation of viewing practices; a series of individual informant interviews conducted in sample households; and semi-structured focus group interviews designed to elicit audience interpretations of programs broadcast on Indonesian television. Media audiences are distinguished by six social dimensions including gender, age, religious orientation, occupation, household economy, and town or village residence; while patterns of interpretation include the assignment of truth-value, the instrumental role of audience values, the perception of moral messages, and the negotiation through media of rationality and instinct as cultural polarities within Indonesian Islam. These reception practices have emerged from interpretive precedents related to prior forms of expressive communication including the vernacular arts, Quranic recitation, and inspirational religious lectures. Finally, these reception patterns influence the national culture impact of mass media. But the analysis shows that while reception practices have emerged from local cultural experience, particularly Banjarese regional tradition and Islam, their net effect is to subtly support and promote the national culture of Indonesia as represented in the mass media