Contribution short abstract

This ethnographic research examines how journalists and indigenous sources embody the affects of reporting land conflict. Set in Indonesia's food estate megaproject in South Papua, this research unpacks humanising narratives of citizen solidarity in the face of state-sponsored violence and ecocide.

Contribution long abstract

In the name of "food sovereignty," Indonesia is clearing 2,000,000 hectares of South Papuan forests for rice and sugar monocultures. Deploying the military to oversee massive land grabs, this food estate megaproject is displacing tens of thousands of indigenous Papuans, causing irreversible damage to biodiverse ecosystems that are vital to Earth’s climate stability.

In a Jakarta-centric media landscape predominantly owned by politically powerful conglomerates, Indonesian journalists encounter challenges in getting investigative reports funded and platformed—often risking their careers and personal safety for voicing solidarity for Papua. Meanwhile, indigenous communities displaced by the food estate lose their living spaces, livelihoods and societal stability at gunpoint: it is a manifestation of a violent, ecocidal state-sponsored land grabbing playbook that no Indonesians are safe from, and Papuans are extra vulnerable to due to racial and political factors. There is a current gap of academic scholarship on the affects of reporting intergenerationally traumatic land grabs, both on the journalists’ side, as well as the side of the sources experiencing it.

My research aims to explore the personal and collective political impacts of humanising journalistic narratives about agrarian conflict through the eyes of the indigenous Papuans experiencing it and the Indonesian journalists reporting it. Inspired by affective research methodologies, action research and eco-feminist ethnography, I aim to expand the current scholarship of Indonesian media and Papuan self-determination by amplifying my participants’ empirical knowledge of the field’s lived realities. I plan to use qualitative methods, including semi-structured in-depth interviews, participatory observation, and content analysis.