Abstrack:
The number of non-voters in Madura is still high. The regencies in Madura have the highest rates in East Java in terms of their participation in using voting rights. The participation rates of the four regencies are as follows: Sampang 65,231 votes (13.91%), Bangkalan 62,502 votes (13.56%), Sumenep 55,854 votes (8.05%), and Pamekasan 35,352 votes (7.88%). At present the government still uses the same strategy model for all public, which is contradictory to the fact that different public have different demographic, social, economic, and cultural characteristics. The high rate of absentia voters is caused by the cooccurrence of voting day with tobacco planting season which Madurese prioritize as an economic opportunity. Various socialization efforts have been done such as campaigns about the implementation of national election. Other activities done to increase people?s participation include holding seminars and election dialogues, advertising on television, radio, and mass media as well as spreading posters and election procedures in strategic places. However, these efforts have not been able to decrease the high number of non-voters. This paper aims to study the non-voting phenomenon in Madura from the cross cultural communication viewpoint. Cross cultural communication is a field in Communication Studies which focuses on the comparison patterns of interindividual communication among communication participants with different cultural backgrounds. Originally, cross-cultural studies derives from social and cultural anthropology whose study is in the form of depth description, that is, an in-depth description about communication behaviors based on certain culture. Madurese people are known to have a unique, stereotypical, and stigmatic culture. The use of the term unique refers to the definition that Madurese ethnic entity has cultural specificity which is different from the ethnography of other ethnic communities. This cultural specificity is obvious among others in their obedience and acceptance hierarchically to the four figures in their social and religious life. The figures are Buppa? (father), Babbu (mother), Guru (teacher), and Rato (government). To these four principal figures does Madurese people?s hierarchical obedience appear in their social and cultural life (Wiyata, 2003: 1). Keywords : madurese non voters, cross cultural communication.
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