I was covering Indonesian news, so a lot of corruption cases, a lot of political stories.

When I quit journalism, it was because I was tired – not of doing the news, but I was tired of the fact that it didn’t seem as if the things I was writing was making any impact. I used to work for the Jakarta Post, for the Straits times, for many years – a total of fourteen years. We all came from a mainstream journalistic background, mainly news. It was co-founded by me and a couple of journalist friends. N: Tell me a little bit about how Magdalene started.ĭ: We started in 2013. In their own words: 'We channel the voices of feminists, pluralists and progressives, or just those who are not afraid to be different, regardless of their genders, colors, or sexual preferences. Devi's practice as a journalist is relevant to my research because she works in the alternative publishing sector, using online & social media platforms to reach her predominantly urban audience. For me this mostly happens on Facebook or Instagram, since these are pretty much the only platforms I use where interaction happens with people I know and where my actual identity is so interwoven with my online identity.'ĭevi Asmarani is the editor in chief of Magdalene, one of the first progressive feminist online magazines in Indonesia. Even online it sometimes feels uncomfortable to take up space.

'I think most of the time it comes down to not wanting the attention, and then I mean more that I don't want to take the attention/seem like I want the attention. Sometimes by not posting certain things, or just not confronting, even they are saying something very wrong and full of hatred.' 'I try to avoid this kind of confrontation since it can get very personal, and to be honest, I got some bad experiences growing up as a lesbian kid and I somehow want to avoid this kind of situation as much as I can. Especially with LGBT issues they are sooo hateful.' One time I posted something on my story on Insta about how annoying something in Indo was – I can’t remember what – but then I got an anonymous DM like “anjing kalo lo ga suka ngapain masih disini ini negara tuhan” or some shit like that. 'I don’t like engaging in online discussions cause it never ever goes anywhere, but 99% of the time when I am unsure about posting something it’s about controversial topics like environmentalism or social inequality.

I was very thoughtful to not post things that would create any kind of conflict.' 'I changed my name for a while on Facebook. 'I'm pretty sure there were many occasions where I would try to think of a clever reply to a comment and be on it for minutes at a time, writing and rewriting, eventually not replying anything.' 'Sometimes I wanted to react on certain tweets, but decided not to because I didn't want to get attacked by a twitter mob.'

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