Typology of Muslim Audience in Responding to Media Contents Consist of Religious Symbols

Abstract

Audience is one of central terms that related with media according to the historical of the terms and the mass communication discourse. On the other sides, audiences referring to several authors who have given their concerns to it, audience related to economic, business, technology, politic, and etc. interest. Audience came after the media invented. However, the audience dynamic from the previous (ancestor) periods to our current time still relevant to be explored, described, and explained particularly that related to the Muslim community as the increasing community in world and as major community in Indonesia, in this research look through the religious symbols on media contents to be based of category of Muslim audience as the actor related with the media. Therefore, this research tries to find the typology of Muslim audience in responding to media contents consisting of religious symbols. This research using quantitative and qualitative data which was collected through cross-sectional survey. The UG approach and Active audience approach promoted by authors as Biocca being the theoretical based in collecting and analysis data of this research. The descriptive statistic is the quantitative result to be based the typology and the qualitative data to find the enrich and deeper description and explanation about how Muslim use media until researcher be able to make the categorization of Muslim audience regarding how they have responded to media contents consisting religious symbols. Finally, this research got seven big or rough categories of Muslim audiences in responding to media content containing religious symbols. There are clear enough that online platform media, primarily media social as the dominant media looking over the Muslim audience in this research as instagram. Almost 80% the audiences looking for the media content consisting of religious symbols when they are using media. Also the major of the audiences in this research are young people, which have educational background senior high school, and when they are asked through questionnaire they are students the particular sub-topics show us they are hesitated to give their judgment on them. However, even there are a number of interesting findings, two typical result that religious symbols could be used to educational purposes even they think the content usually bring to the controversy in society, at least what we find frequently on media social.