Fourthly, I will address the importance of not merely the content, but also the style of Wardhana’s writings, including his novel.

Thirdly, I will demonstrate the similarities and differences between his work and the initiatives of the Komisi Penyiaran Indonesia ( KPI, Indonesian Broadcasting Commission), the main institution for monitoring the broadcast media in Indonesia, and the broader Indonesian media watch and media literacy movement.

Secondly, I will analyse the broader context of the political economy of the media to which Wardhana’s work is responding. Firstly, I will provide a biography of Wardhana, including a short bibliography of his work. My strategy to approach the large number of writings and wide diversity of genres is five-fold. Wardhana’s oeuvre includes columns, essays, research articles, short stories, and a novel, which share as one of their common themes the social role and impact of television. Wardhana’s work is important, as it examines a crucial aspect of Indonesian contemporary society: the mass media and the nascent study of it. How to deal with a corpus of writings that counts thousands of pages? How to deal with a corpus of writings that includes both fiction and non-fiction? How to deal with a corpus of writings that covers seemingly ephemeral phenomena? How to deal with a corpus of writings in a field that is not strongly embedded in institutional structures or academic traditions? How to deal with a corpus of writings by an author who has not yet received much critical attention? The author of this article proposes an approach and context to explain and do justice to these writings, which cover a central part of the oeuvre of journalist, essayist, and literary author Veven Sp. The author argues that the work of creative actors like Wardhana could constitute an answer to the lack of resources in Indonesian Media and Cultural Studies departments. Unlike the formal mechanisms of media regulation, his work approaches the media not merely in terms of institutions and content, but rather as socio-cultural environments and ecologies. Wardhana’s writings stand out for their identification of the recurring and interrelated issues in Indonesian media history conceptualization of Indonesia as a televised world and creative reworking of television in an experimental literary form. The article will contextualize Wardhana’s work by comparing it with the activities of the independent Indonesian Broadcasting Commission and the broader media watch and media literacy movement. This oeuvre constitutes a critical and creative documentation of the role of the media, particularly television, in Indonesia’s transition from authoritarianism to democracy.

This article focuses on the oeuvre of Indonesian journalist, essayist, and literary author Veven Sp.

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