“Why The Media Often Gets Us Wrong?”: The Public Fantasies and Media’s Portrayal of Trans Women in Indonesia

Reporting practices and the flow of information disseminated through mass media are inherently never one-directional looking from a sociocultural standpoint. Media plays a crucial role in re-projecting social narratives into a synthesis of notions to be more easily accepted by the public. Mediatized information is inextricably linked to how human thought is processed with their elaborations—which are expressed and articulated within societal dynamics—further clarifies that mass media also contributes in shaping the dynamics within the society itself. Henceforth, it is believed that the stigmatization and stereotypes against trans women in Indonesia are not solely driven by how the media portrayed them, but also by the deeply rooted public fantasies about gender norms. To examine how these affect trans women in Indonesia, a qualitative method was employed in this research with in-depth interviews and participant observations on several trans women in Semarang.  A wider range of perspectives and perceptions were uncovered regarding the complexity between trans women and the mass media, along with the intrigues highlighting the ambiguity of freedom they possess. This research adopts Erving Goffman’s framing theory which highlights the existence of various schemes in how individuals perceive the world. Furthermore, Goffman’s theory intersects with how mass media reports the news, which can significantly have an impact on reconstructing social reality and creating a perceptual framework that is no longer multi-interpretive due to the framing of information. The findings indicate that without considering the characteristics of the depicted society, mass media cannot effectively convey its messages to achieve audience acceptance.