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Abstract

The 2010s saw a surge in the number of Indonesian regional filmmakers using YouTube to showcase their creative practices and engage in cultural and media commoning activities. This article explores the production practices and community networking of Hajar Pamuji and his eponymous YouTube channel (HP channel). In exploring their media commoning practices, I examine the HP channel’s YouTube series Film Pendek Hajar Pamuji (FPHP), particularly its production strategies as creative negotiations and engagement schemes. Tracing the connections and networking of their YouTube channel, I further examine HP’s positioning within its solidarity networks, alongside its viewership, local collaborators and regional communities. I argue that these regional media commoning strategies leverage interconnected production and distribution networks and engage in cultural interventions within Indonesia’s new media ecosystem. Despite operating on a commercialized global platform, Hajar and the HP channel pay particular attention to regional resource sharing, highlighting their interconnectedness and solidarity networking. They thus shape a model of cultural commoning practice in a negotiated terrain where ideas of the commons led to the reconfiguration of creative space within a larger network of resource sharing.

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