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Live-streaming Merapi: Villagers build communities through their own YouTube channels
With little faith in government institutions to warn them about volcanic hazards, villagers living around Mount Merapi created their own YouTube live streams to provide updates on the volcano's activity.
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Footage live-streamed by Posko Induk Balerante's YouTube channel. (JP/Hariz Ghifari)
O
n an afternoon late last January, Nadya Makhya's smartphone began blowing up with notifications. It was her parents, panicking from the news of Mount Merapi erupting. The 25-year-old was working in Yogyakarta, while her parents lived in their native Surabaya, East Java.
"The news about Merapi on social media is often exaggerated [...] I sent them a link for a live video stream of Merapi so they can see for themselves,” Nadia said, explaining that this was something that a lot of other Yogyakarta residents did to calm relatives who lived in other cities.
The link Nadya sent her parents pointed to various YouTube channels broadcasting Mount Merapi's activities non-stop for 24 hours. The contents are a mix of CCTV broadcasts, graphics containing raw seismic observation data and a seismograph indicating the volcano’s activity. These channels are managed by residents living near the volcano, including Posko Induk Frekom, Posko Induk Balerante and Volcano YT.
"We installed CCTVs so that we can observe the volcano anytime, anywhere. With this, we don't have to stand by the monitoring post. We can keep watch while we do other work,” said Frekom founder Suparjo.
Frekom is short for “Merapi community electronic radio frequency” in Indonesian.
We met the 40-year-old at his house in Kemirikebo village, 8 kilometers away from the summit. Frekom began as a private network for nearby residents to exchange information about the volcano. The residents used walkie-talkies set to an AM frequency. In his daily life, Suparjo runs a goat milk processing business.
