Female Dangdut Singers as Folk Devils in Indonesian Online Media

摘要

This paper aims to discuss the ways Indonesian online media presents some groups of women as ‘folk devils’, persons who are labeled as deviant to the social norms and convention. The Indonesian media has a great role in identifying and creating women as ‘folk devils’, such as female dangdut singers, mother killers, girl gangs, women in relationships with younger men and women in relationships with married men. The conventional assumption that media is objective and apolitical in its journalism is challenged as in fact the media is bias and political in the ways it selects news that are reported to its readers. The criteria used to select news are in line with the operating ideologies that are designed to hegemonize, using the trivial and common sense to create truth. Using Stanley Cohen’s concept on ‘folk devils’, this paper will analyze news reports on female dangdut singers to identify the media bias and the working of social control on female dangdut singers. From the phenomenon of Inul Daratista with her ‘drilling movement’ until the recent news on the involvement of female dangdut singers in most corruption cases, dangdut singers are always in the center of the Indonesian news. In 2003, the controversies surrounding Inul was such that every little detail of her life and activities were reported by almost all TV stations and tabloids, not to mention books and research specifically published to discuss the Inulmania. Media might position female dangdut singers in the marginalized group, but at the same time they are also acknowledged the female dangdut singers as powerful. These seemingly inconsistent ways of looking at the position of female dangdut singers in the Indonesian society might reveal the operating ideology of the Indonesian media and the existing structure of the Indonesian society.udud