Kartini, Online Media, and the Politics of the Jokowi Era: A Critical Discourse Analysis

Abstract

The indigenous education activist and feminist of the late Dutch colonial era, R.A. Kartini, has remained an enduring public icon for more than a century. While celebrated as a national hero in Indonesia, like many iconic women of the Global South, Kartini’s symbolic force has been readily appropriated for political ends. As a ‘floating signifier’, her image absorbs fluctuating meanings and ideologies, making the analysis of her representation at a given point in time a valuable approach to political analysis. This article focuses on Kartini’s portrayal in the second term of the Jokowi presidency in mainstream Indonesian online media discourse. Recognising the dialectical relationship between the online news media and dominant political discourse, we use critical discourse analysis to identify and examine the mainstream ideologies embedded in the news media’s representations of Kartini. Our analysis provides a snapshot of dominant Indonesian political discourse, revealing a set of intersecting ideologies: conservative feminism, neoliberalism, softened Islamic piety, and perfunctory nationalism.