Rieke Diah Pitaloka is one of the politicians who earned a doctoral degree in the Communication Science Doctoral Program at the University of Indonesia in May 2022. Her busy life as a politician did not discourage Rieke from completing her doctoral studies in less than three years. This made Rieke named the fastest doctorate at FISIP UI from the field of communication science.
Having a bachelor’s degree in Dutch Literature from the University of Indonesia and a master’s degree in Philosophy from the University of Indonesia did not prevent her from continuing her doctoral education in Communication Science at the University of Indonesia. Her willingness to broaden her horizons and explore communication science in the study of public policy making encouraged Rieke to take a doctoral degree in communication science.
Rieke, who is now active as a member of DPR RI Commission VI, completed her dissertation entitled “Recolonialization Policy: State Symbolic Violence Through Rural Data Collection”. According to him, figures related to data collection are not just a “statistical story”, but actually state data is an aggregation of rural data where the data covers space and time, along with rural social life. His dissertation focuses on studies related to the correlation of rural data with the formulation of public policy, this ultimately helps analyze and interpret public policy in the construction of social space and rural life. Rieke believes that data is an important instrument in the formulation of public policy.
In her dissertation, Rieke asserted that the realization of the principles of
good governance
principles in every state policy, one of which must be emphasized in the
democratic rural development
. Meanwhile, currently the data reproduced by the state has not been integrated between spatial and numerical data and does not meet the principles of accurate, actual, and relevant data (
pseudo data
), making it difficult to validate.Departing from his anxiety about
pseudo data
which is still perpetuated in every policy-making in Indonesia, Rieke found that the recolonialization policy proves the symbolic violence of the state regarding rural data. Her seriousness in the academic field is no joke, as evidenced by her cum laude degree. Rieke hopes that her dissertation can become an academic study that can be considered in the preparation of public policies in the future. (DLN)
