Indonesia's Underground Press

Abstract

This article analyses the performance of Indonesia's underground media in the period leading to the fall of the Suharto dictatorship. Analyses are based on interviews with media activists as well as a qualitative study of the contents of these media. Constructs of media frame analysis and movements rhetoric are used to gain an understanding of the struggle between the ideology of the Indonesian regime and the ideology of the social movements. The first part of the article describes the organizational and individual histories of the people running these underground media; the second part scrutinizes the rhetoric and the recurrent media frames. The frames for looking at Indonesian problems that were proposed by the underground media gained resonance with the public at large, eventually contributing to Suharto's downfall.