Internet and Social Change in Rural Indonesia: From Development Communication to Communication Development in Decentralized Indonesia

This book is based on an empirical research which explores bottom-up development practices initiated and organized by rural communities in the Indonesian periphery by placing “communication” at its core of analysis. The aim is to determine the extent that the Indonesian decentralization policy and the use of internet and other digital Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) has affected the theory and practice of development communication as well as changes in relations between the center and the periphery within the context of Indonesian rural development. The book takes on periphery perspective in center-periphery interactions and relations. Hence, it belongs to "periphery research" that has rarely been used in recent decades. By using Grounded Theory for its data collection and analysis method, the results of this study are grouped into two major thematic categories: “communication development”, instead of development communication, and “communication empowerment”.

Subekti Priyadharma is a lecturer at the Faculty of Communication Science, Padjadjaran University (Unpad), Indonesia. He completed his M.A. degree in communication science at the University of Erfurt in 2008. After starting his academic career at Unpad, he came back to Erfurt in 2013 to begin his doctorate on the subject “Internet and Social Change”. His research subjects include communication for social change, ICT4D, new media and society, and media ecology.