Final Blog Post

Over the course of the semester, I was surprised to learn as much as what I found out about the social media and overall media in Indonesia. Even though the country wasn’t my first or second choice as far as blog topic assignment goes, it was enlightening and interesting to see the countries form of media as far as news broadcasting, journalism standards, and societies acceptance of journalism. From research on the freedomhouse.org, I learned that Indonesia attained a total freedom press index of 117 of 178 countries.

In 2009, there was a large offset to journalism due to violence against various journalists. Soon after laws were created and violent acts were declined. After resolving many of these conflicts through various laws and acts, journalism has been much more free and resembles many of the news in the United States as far as how the news is written and what is being published to the masses.

With the use of The Jakarta Post and The Jakarta Globe as my primary news outlets for this blog assignment, as well as the international portion of the New York Times specialized for Indonesia, I was able to follow up on important/breaking/current news in the country. I’ve learned that many Indonesians get most of their news from the Internet itself. Many in the country rely on the Internet as its source to the headline news.

In a recent article posted on the Jakarta Globe just this week, it was found that Facebook is considered how many Indonesians are getting a majority of their news. From wall posts and the convenience of linking certain articles to pages, it is found that Facebook is what garners a majority of “hits” on news websites such as the Jakarta Globe and the Jakarta Post. Even though it is minimal compared to sites such as Indonesia Google, it is still is a big number of people who find out a majority of their news solely through social media.

I have also learned that many Indonesians are well up to date with American social media as well, attaining accounts in popular mediums such as Twitter, Facebook, Blogger and even 4shared.

Originally, I thought Indonesia was still a small nearly third-world country with minimal news media and social media in general but after learning of their news and seeing what many Indonesians are seeing on a day to day basis, as what I would see when logging into the Los Angeles Times, I now see that they are far more advanced than I previously thought.