The Modernization of Election Campaigns and Its Research Opportunities in Indonesia’s Direct Elections Era

Elections have changed significantly since 2004 in Indonesia when citizens for the very first time voted directly for their national leaders. The changes seen not only at the significant participations, either in the electorates or in the political parties contesting the elections, but more so on the way campaigns were conducted. Political parties and individual candidates have run campaigns in a way that has a deep involvement of political marketing, scientific research,  political consultants,  and professionalization  of strategies  and the  messages conveyed to the voters, to which often referred to as modernization of campaign. Professionalization of campaigning has given a new face of electoral politics in Indonesia, where crafting persuasive message to woo the public is much more important than the substantive and ideological policy preferences offered to the people. Individual popularity becomes a dominant factor for elites to compete for political positions through election. This calls for investigation, because what happens during campaigns will influence the rest of electoral process and the results accordingly. This paper is aimed at exploring the modernization of campaigns theory, observing its practices in Indonesia, and categorizing its thematic research opportunities in the context of Indonesian direct elections

Paralelisme Politik Media dalam Pemberitaan Pemilu 2014 di Indonesia

Media biases may caused by various factors. One of them is called political parallelism. Political parallelism weakens the roles of media in democratic process by becoming overly one-sided leading to low quality of news news quality. The aim of this article is to investigate the presence and effect of media political parallelism on election news during the 2014 legislative and presidential elections in Indonesia, using content analysis on news items from four print media outlets. The findings show that media with certain political parallelism display high favorability in coverage of its own affiliations

Media Baru, Ruang Publik Baru, dan Transformasi Komunikasi Politik di Indonesia

This article tries to unveil the transformative power of the new media platforms that reshape a new pattern of political communication in our democracy. Furthermore, the characteristics of new media have contributed significantly to the renaissance of an enabling public sphere. The structure of new media transforms the restricted and deep-rooted top-down pattern of political communication into one that is decentralized and bottom-up today. There are, at least, five forms of transformation in the pattern of political communication as the result of utilizing various features of the new media technology, namely e-government,  political campaign,  citizen’s aspirations channel, and decentralized political education. Some trends of the application in the context of general election’s micro-political communication (citizen-to-citizen) are discussed succinctly, such as Vote Cerdas BDG, Orang Baik, Bersih2014, Check Your Candidates, Mata Massa, Rumah Pemilu, and Jari Ungu

INTERNET DAN TEKNOLOGI WIRELESS AKSES UNIVERSAL ATAS INFORMASI

Internet is the most important aspect of information and communication technologies (ICTs) today. It brings significant changes in many parts of the society, in politics, economy, and in culture. The unprecedented changes happening in those domains are possible, in part, due to the advent of wireless technology that has created a free access of information and makes time and distance irrelevant than before. With the combination of social media, wireless technology, and the internet, we can communicate and access information from and to anywhere, and at any time now despite some obstacles both technical and cultural. This article aims to highlight the system, application of wireless technology, and challenges of its use in Indonesia, especially with the perennial issue of digital divide cause by either technical and cultural factors. The gap is not only on the dimension of physical access, but also on other dimensions which are commonly ignored namely motivation to use, skill access, and usage access.

Menegakkan Jurnalisme Etis dalam Pemberitaan Kasus Terorisme

Media coverage of terrorism has tendency of bias because both media and terrorists take advantages in the relationship. Media benefit much from the news value of the striking acts of terror that spark fear and anger at the same time. The terrorists win free publication of their actions in achieving their goals. Therefore the credibility of the news media should be built upon the ethical journalism practice to eliminate the bias. This article proposed a theoretical and practical foundation for implementing ethical journalism in covering terrorism. Journalists should comply with a new principle of objectivity in reporting terrorism. As the society needs accurate information about events around them, news media should be able to provide ―first  aid‖  package of information, so that members of the society can act rationally and be calm during the tense situation. Ethical journalism with a renewed standard of objectivity could keep the first aid of information constantly flowing to the society facing fear and danger of terrorism

SIKAP POLITIK PERS TERHADAP PEMERINTAHAN KOALISI Analisis Isi Pemberitaan Pers Nasional atas Pemerintahan Koalisi Pascapemilihan Umum 2009 pada Harian Kompas, Media Indonesia, dan Republika Periode 1 November 2009�30 April 2010

There are many research projects which have been conducted under the topic of media and politics, yet very little is concerned with the oppositional coverage of the media over the government. The main focus in the relation is to weight the embodiment of press� democractic function with its watchdog role. This issue becomes more compelling to study due to the fact that the low political opposition in the parliament, severe public trust over the ruling elites, and the rampant corruption among government officials in this country. Therefore, it is highly needed to analyze how critical are the press towards the government amids those political ills. This research analyzes how oppositional are the national press towards the coalition government established after the 2009 election. The results of content analysis of 610 editorials and headline news from Media Indonesia, Republika, and Kompas show that the three national leading newspapers are quite oppositional towards the coalition government. Editorials proved to be more oppositioal than headline news. Furthermore, media autonomy in expressing their political opinion is high in editorial, but low in headline news. The most opposed political actor is the president, and the most opposed political institution is the government itself. The concept of oppositional coverage needs to be developed into an extensive research, either on time and the scope of the media under investigation