Australia and Indonesia: A Neighbour’s Perspective

Relations between Indonesia and Australia have been characterised by periods of cooperation and periods of conflict. Unfortunately, research shows that moments of friction have largely shaped each nation’s perceptions of the other nation and its people. The honours study informing this paper was conducted over a set period that ended in 2005, before relations between Australia and Indonesia soured over the Papuan asylum seeker issue and subsequent distasteful images that were published in the media in early 2006. Although this is not considered in this paper, it does highlight the tenuous nature of diplomatic relations and the role the media plays in that relationship. In a global climate of Islamic-linked terrorism, ideally there should be more trust and understanding between such geographically close neighbours, not only in terms of diplomatic and trade relations but also among the public. For most Australians and Indonesians the only perceptions they have of their neighbours are those derived from their mass media. Thus media play an essential role in how each nation views the other and in bilateral relations. The purpose of the research on which this paper is based was to determine how Indonesia and Australia have been portrayed in each other’s newsprint media and explore what influenced those portrayals. An additional aim was to develop a way to systematically measure and analyse those representations that could provide a research framework with which to inform further research on the topic. As such, content analyses were conducted of articles from two of each nation’s newspapers taken from three case study periods: the first six months of 2005, the 2002 Bali bombings, and the 2004 Boxing-Day tsunami. This paper will largely discuss this empirical research, in terms of the research methods applied and the findings. To place this post-2000 research in context, however, it is first necessary to briefly explain the review of relevant pre-2000 literature and research