Toward a Working Model of Peace Journalism in Reporting Interfaith Communication

Having six official religions and numerous ethnic-based religions, Indonesia is prone to interfaith conflicts. There have been several interfaith conflicts recorded, but many left unnoticed. This leads to the importance of promoting interfaith communication, in which mass media inevitably play a major role. This research aims to reveal the portrayal of interfaith communication in Indonesia on major online media. There has been a growing body of research on interfaith dialogue, but this study seeks to view it from a wider perspective of communication and put the study in the context of the pandemic, a situation in which people rely more on mediated communication. Practically, this research might contribute to building an initial model of interfaith communication in Indonesia. Theoretically, this study expects to contribute to the development of peace journalism by assessing its premises in the context of interfaith relations. The study uses qualitative content analysis, revealing the theme of news about interfaith encounters. The result shows that online media in Indonesia performed peace journalism by regularly portraying interfaith communications in the aspect of cooperation, but lacking in the portrayal of alternative views and positive experience. This research implicates the need for media to intensify and deepen the coverage of interfaith reporting to further promote the discourse of interfaith harmony.