AUDIENCE SEGMENTATION IN INDONESIAN MUSLIM SOCIETY FRAMING AUSTRALIAN ISSUES
Abstract
ndonesia is the world’s largest Muslim society. According to PEW Research Report in 2010, 60% of Muslim world population is from the Asia-Pacific, of which 20.37% of them live in Indonesia (january 2011). According to Citybank’s prediction cited by Professor Huge White, Indonesia will have the fourth world’s largest economic growth in 2040. Based on that, He states that Australia must place high priority on a strategic relationship with Indonesia. Unfortunately, Mahony finds that Australian media generally frame Indonesian Government and its people as undifferentiated Muslim community. However, Indonesia cannot be seen as one entity because it has a variety Muslim groups.
This research aims to examine different frames of Australia in the eyes of different Indonesian Muslim groups. There are two challenging methodological issues that can be found in this research. First, combining two methodological approaches (qualitative and quantitative) and second, defining the research subjects for in-depth interview.
The methodology seeks to modify the audience framing process through integrating audience segmentation with it. These concepts treat audience in different ways. Audience framing tends to see audience as active; on the other hand, audience segmentation tends to see the audience as passive. Besides that, both concepts have different methodological approaches; qualitative for audience framing and quantitative for audience segmentations. The solution to this problem is to combine the two concepts into one interview protocol.
Moreover, the second methodological issue in this research is about defining the research subjects since there are many Muslim groups spread widely in all Indonesian regions. The alternate solution to this problem is to choose Yogyakarta and Surakarta as case studies as both cities host Islamic groups long histories as well as of great variety.