Journal of Mass Communication & Journalism

The Media as Social Watch in Forest Management: Indonesia Experience

Abstract

Setyawati D and Shaw R

In the past decades, climate change and global warming issues have been recurring in the media and public sphere. Despite the continuous calling to stop environmental destruction, deforestation continues at an alarming rate. More than a medium to transmit information, the media can play important role to influence decision making of government and other stakeholders forest management. This paper studied the case in Indonesia where the media industry is thriving and deforestation is growing. Discourse analysis on 150 forestry related articles from three online media found that there is a difference in the focus of national and local media. The national media coverage tends to discuss the problems of an issue while the local media provides solutions to those issues. To overcome this mismatch, the local and social media can create trends that would be resonated by national media. Then, the role of media as ‘social watch’ can be effective. In fulfilling such role, this paper proposes a framework of action plans in which the media can act as social watch. Within this framework, the action plans include the role of media in agenda setting, capacity building, bridging, monitoring assessment and reporting and documenting.