PARENTAL PERCEPTIONS OF MEDIA AND PARENTAL MEDIATION OF MEDIA USE: A STUDY OF INDONESIAN MUSLIM MOTHERS IN MEDIATING THEIR CHILDREN'S TELEVISION AND INTERNET USE

Abstract

As the use of media and technology in everyday life continues to intensify, parents are increasingly concerned about negative media effects and seek to impose parental mediation to control their children`s use of the media. This study attempts to explore parental mediation by Muslim-Javanese parents as they seek to supervise their children¿s consumption of television and the Internet. Religious beliefs are a central issue in this study because most previous studies use it narrowly as a simplistic demographic measure. Yet religious beliefs warrant greater scrutiny because of their influence in shaping parental attitudes towards child-rearing, media content and the supervision of media use. Furthermore, growing trends towards greater religiosity in some parts of the world add further urgency to the study of this issue. Given the salience of Islam in the lives of Muslim-Javanese people in Indonesia, this particular group constitutes an appropriate sample population for understanding the impact of religious beliefs on parental mediation of children¿s media consumption. Ethnographic interviews with Muslim-Javanese parents will be conducted in Indonesia, i.e. in the province of Yogyakarta (as a centre of the one of biggest the Indonesian Muslim organizations called ¿Muhammadiyah¿) to investigate the families¿ perceptions of media and their mediation practices and to understand how media devices and their use are incorporated into the families¿ everyday lives and above all, to understand the influence of religious beliefs on the afore-mentioned.