Critical Discourse Analysis of Pandawara Group’s Environmental Communication on Social Media Platforms 30 29
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.26623/themessenger.v18i1.13210Keywords:
Environmental Communication, Social Media Activism, Discourse AnalysisAbstract
Purpose: This study aims to explain how The Pandawara Group constructs, disseminates, and negotiates environmental discourse through TikTok and YouTube content by analysing the language strategies and narrative structures they use in describing the environmental activist with the largest number of followers in Indonesia.
Methods: This study uses a qualitative approach with Teun A. van Dijk’s Critical Discourse Analysis. Teun A. van Dijk’s discourse analysis was chosen because it can read texts, social cognition, and social context simultaneously. The Pandawara Group’s YouTube and TikTok content analysed consists of videos announcing polluted locations, which serve as calls to action, documentation of clean-up activities in the field, and clarification posts when criticism or rejection arises from local government or communities.
Findings: The findings show that the Pandawara Group successfully portrays environmental issues as a shared moral obligation through inclusive language, persuasive calls to action, and visual before-and-after comparisons that encourage mass voluntary participation. Their rhetoric strategically shifts the conversation from blame to cooperation, allowing them to negotiate socio-political resistance and strengthen legitimacy in the digital public sphere.
Originality: This study addresses a gap in prior research, which largely treats collective-action narratives alone, by proposing a dual-narrative framework that combines collective mobilization with discursive resistance-clarification, analysed by van Dijk’s three-level model. Extending connective action theory, it explains how non-institutional Gen Z activists negotiate legitimacy and manage socio-political backlash while sustaining mass participation.
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