Abstract

The purpose of this study is to interrogate how the official tourism websites of Jakarta, represent the tourism and culture of Jakarta; and to understand how those tourism discourses form a part of wider social processes, and social practices. The investigation uses Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to examine the contents of both texts and visual images, and interpret how they reflect Jakarta’s tourist resources. Societal analysis focuses on explanations of social discourses surrounding interpretations of the data.
The study found through the visual images and the texts, that Jakarta was represented as both traditional and modern. Several concepts drawn from the postcolonial literature were used to explore the traditional and modern representation of Jakarta namely exoticism, cultural hybridity and mimicry, primitivism, and authenticity. In addition, notions of self-Orientalism and issues of gender emerged in the analysis of these representations. The exoticisation of Jakarta was represented in the content, structure and practice of traditional foods; traditional clothing of Jakarta; in the traditional dances of Jakartans, and the traditional street theatre.
Cultural hybridity was relevant in that those traditional performing arts were influenced by Chinese and European cultures. The representation of native people on Jakarta’s websites related to the concept of primitivism. The concept of authenticity was problematised for example in the representation of the Selamat Datang monument, the patung Pancoran, and the National monument as authentic city properties.. The concept of self-Orientalism was applied here, where Jakartan females were represented
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as inferior and in dependent relationships with men, confirming Orientalist stereotypes of Asian women. The study also found the concept of cultural mimicry and hybridity in the representation of Jakarta as modern, such as shopping malls, amusement parks, and spa treatments. From the discussion, there were also some wider social issues which arose from the representation of traditional elements of Jakarta’s culture. That is, to meet tourists’ needs the originality of the traditional foods of Jakarta, such as Kerak Telor was changed. Similarly, the effects of Ondel-ondel or traditional street theatre of Jakarta being used to meet the tourists’ demands, is over exploitation. However, the study revealed that there was no significant social impact of the representation of Jakarta as modern. Another important finding emerging from the study is that the official websites are more powerful compared to other online forms of information about a destination. It was because the official website is government owned, so, it appears to be credible; it also allowed the Tourism Board to use several techniques to represent the destination, such as the use of the story telling method and multimodal discourses, such as texts, photos, videos, or logos.