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BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article

Front. Commun.
Sec. Media Governance and the Public Sphere
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fcomm.2025.1552110

Ideology, Resistance, and Sociopolitical Dynamics in Indonesia: Media Narratives and Resistance Discourses on the Chairman of the Corruption Eradication Commission's Corruption Case

Provisionally accepted
Zalfa Qathrunnada Zalfa Qathrunnada Catur Nugroho Catur Nugroho *Freddy Yusanto Freddy Yusanto Astri Wulandari Astri Wulandari Roro Retno Wulan Roro Retno Wulan
  • Telkom University, Bandung, West Java, Indonesia

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Indonesia's Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) is an anti-graft organization established in 2003 that plays a vital role in preventing and eradicating corrupt practices in Indonesia. Ironically, KPK Chairman 2019-2023, Firli Bahuri, was named a corruption suspect on November 22, 2023. The incident of naming the KPK Chairman as a suspect by the police caused conflict between KPK and the Police Department and attracted the media's attention. This article aims to discover how DetikCom, Kompas.com, and Tempo.co, produce texts and discourses of resistance by the KPK Chairman against being named a suspect. Researchers also tried to uncover the ideology and interests of the media in the production of corruption discourse in Indonesia based on the external context of media and politics in Indonesia. The author used the text analysis method with Norman Fairclough's Critical Discourse Analysis to analyze eighteen media texts. The researcher found that the resistance discourse packaged by Detikcom online media tends to support the law enforcement narrative by providing more space for the Police Department to convey evidence and processes carried out. Kompas.com emphasizes that Firli has the right to file a pretrial and that the legal process must be respected, giving the impression that the media respects Firli's legal rights. Tempo.co emphasized the case's legal aspects and processes, including Firli Bahuri's pretrial submission. At the sociocultural level, there is a relationship between corruption cases in Indonesia, government policies, and public responses to the conflict discourse over the KPK chairman.

    Keywords: Corruption, critical discourse, media ideology, online media, Indonesia

    Received: 07 Jan 2025; Accepted: 03 Feb 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Qathrunnada, Nugroho, Yusanto, Wulandari and Wulan. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Catur Nugroho, Telkom University, Bandung, West Java, Indonesia

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.