The construction of mediated debates: a study of corruption discourse in democratising Indonesia

Abstract

This study examines the structure of mediated discourse and the way in which the media facilitated public engagement for those mediated debates, setting the thematic parameter of the corruption case within the public sphere. The unfolding of this corruption case constituted one of the drivers for Indonesia’s democratic transformation, the results of which illuminate the discursive mechanisms of the specific process of how this case was brought into public discourse. Two methods are applied in this study: (1), an analysis of ‘intertextual’ relations across different media platforms which construct the larger discursive ‘markers’ of the scandal. These discursive markers then reveal the scope of the interwoven mediated debates within Indonesia’s public sphere. (2), a Critical Discourse Analysis which illuminates the discursive mechanisms of the specific process of how this case was brought into public discourse. This empirical study has identified the thematic debates of national online news sites, which were interconnected by shared discursive markers, functioning as a ‘node’ of public discourse within the public sphere. The specific discursive mechanism, through which the media brought the case into the public discourse, was the method of ‘intertextual’ relations within the different media forms in order to create the ‘web’ of common thematic debates.