Ikat 

Abstract: The internet era has facilitated online streaming and social media platforms to burgeon, causing the flow of transnational pop cultures across regions and also offering diverse consumption of media content from around the globe. In Indonesia, the discussion on pop culture has often been centered on the proliferation of K-Pop's popularity among local audiences. Besides, the Boys Love (BL/Y) series from Thailand has also gained considerable interest in the last couple of years. While the consumption of K-Pop and Thailand's BL series in global mediascape is widely accepted without much controversy, incongruous feedbacks are present among Indonesian audiences, particularly pointing at the clash of ideological perspectives between its Muslim conservatives and the youth. The conservative group considers the media contents "vulgar" and "too liberal," while the latter defends them as part of contemporary youth culture and the freedom of expression. This paper then examines two study cases: Shopee's advertisement featuring the K-Pop group, BlackPink, and the case of Ruangguru's ambassador from Thailand, Bright Vachirawit. This paper uses qualitative textual analysis to focus on the two contested ideas (global versus local). The findings illustrate how BlackPink's female bodies and Bright's fluid identity as a lead actor in the BL series have been stigmatized and adjusted to become more acceptable commodities among pious audiences. This study helps to reveal the complexity of global consumption in a Muslim majority country where audiences' cultural identity construction has always been contested. Furthermore, it provides a glimpse of Indonesian society's current perspectives on gender and tolerance.

Abstract: The local film community run by cultural activists typically conducts several film practices, such as film production, distribution, and exhibition independently. In post-New Order Indonesia, the Banyumas subculture has become an alternative site of struggle for producing critical films against mainstream and commercial films. This study questions how Banyumas cultural activists develop critical learning and nurture an awareness-raising process for local students through filmmaking and how Banyumas’ local film production forms a new culture enacting social change. The authors adopt a qualitative approach with multiple case studies to investigate the phenomenon. The data was obtained by conducting in-depth interviews with cultural activists and the vocational/high school students as a filmmaker, observation, and documentation of the films they produced. This study implements Paulo Freire’s idea of critical pedagogy through collaborative filmmaking performed by Banyumas cultural activists and local young students within a specific cultural and outside-classroom setting. Through collaborative filmmaking, the local subjects interrogate the current sites of power and social roles by encouraging dialogue and problem-posing methods. Using visual media, the practice of empowering local cultural identities finds its embodiment in filmmaking as a process and result. As a living cultural expression, films preserve the local culture, redefine the value of humanism, and raise critical awareness about larger social, political, economic, gender, and cultural issues.

Abstract: The Singapore-Johor-Riau Growth Triangle (Sijori-GT) was initiated by the government of Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia in 1989. It took the advantages of complementarities among the involved regions. The peripheral regions were expected to reap benefits and gain spillovers from the extended metropolitan region of Singapore. In the age of 30 years of the growth triangle, many scholars found great progress and challenges of the subregional economic cooperation such as unbalanced development and allegedly weak commitment of the participating countries in Riau Islands. This research has the aim to investigate the tenable commitments of Singapore’s and Malaysia’s Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in Riau Islands. Using statistical data from Indonesia’s Ministry of Investment from 1990 to 2020, this study compared FDI in Riau Islands by origin, and Singapore's and Malaysia's FDI by sector and subsector. The data was analyzed using the independent sample t-test for two-variable comparison and analysis of variance (post-hoc test) for multiple-variable comparison. Finally, this study found that: firstly, investment of Singapore was larger than that of Malaysia in Riau Islands; secondly, Singapore specialized its investment in manufacturing sector having better comparative advantage while Malaysia specialized its investment in non-manufacturing sector with potential assumed capabilities in halal-related sectors. The implication of this research is the importance of provision of competitive policies on industrial land estate prices to attract more investment in Riau Islands and to improve halal-related services to take advantage of domestic halal market and cross-border halal trade.

Abstract: As one topic that is deemed as controversial in Indonesia, pornography is rarely discussed, moreover in terms of adult audience. Most Indonesian research in pornographic media content mainly discussed about its effect on male teenagers. However, as one of many media content forms, pornography is segmented for specific audience, in which is adult. Things become more complicated when it comes to female audience, though, as the normativity of Indonesian society has a set of beliefs that sexual desires only belong to men. Nevertheless, women are able to watch porn as well. Hence, this paper is going to examine how Indonesian female audience perceive the pornographic media content they access, as further to how its impact towards their sexuality as a woman who lives in Indonesian patriarchal society. The research is conducted by new ethnography method with Indonesian female informants who are the audiences of pornographic media content. Significant finding in this research shows that women in this research are highly aware that they, too, have sexual desires just the same as their male counterparts. On the other side, they’re also highly concerned of how people around them make a judgment in regards to women who like sex or watch porn in particular; hence, it affects their sexual expression in their daily life. Furthermore, watching porn has made them negotiate their sexuality as a woman, in a way that they try to make sense of their sexual fantasy and the reality.