Decolonizing Communication and Journalism Studies in Southeast Asia: Historical and Epistemic Excavations on Indonesian Scholarship

This essay argues that decolonizing communication and journalism studies in Southeast Asia requires more than curricular reform or the inclusion of non-Western content. Using Indonesia as a focal point, it emphasizes the need for a historical excavation of the discipline’s formation, tracing its roots in Cold War geopolitics, its consolidation under authoritarian developmentalism, and its entanglement with neoliberal academic frameworks. During the New Order period (1966–1998), the field was mobilized less as a space for reflexive and critical inquiry than as a technocratic apparatus serving the state’s developmental and ideological objectives. The collapse of authoritarianism did not dismantle these epistemic legacies; instead, they persisted through vocational curricula, bureaucratic academic cultures, and the uncritical adoption of Western theories. Meanwhile, efforts to assert Islamic or culturally specific alternatives have often lapsed into romanticized appeals to authenticity, neglecting critical engagement and fostering metaphysical certainty. Decolonization must therefore be conceived as a structural and epistemic project that interrogates and dismantles the knowledge formations that produce chronic superficiality. It begins with historical excavation and proceeds to overhaul the institutional architectures that entrench dependency.