The interplay between government, media, and society: A critical discourse analysis of Indonesia's 'information and electronic transactions' (ITE) law revision in a transitional democracy

This thesis critically examines the discursive representation of Indonesia's 'Information and Electronic Transaction' (ITE) Law and its broader implications for democratic governance and freedom of expression. Initially enacted to regulate digital transactions, the ITE law has been controversial because it has increasingly been used to suppress freedom of speech (Amnesty International Indonesia, 2020; SAFEnet, 2021), reflecting deeper tensions over government law enforcement and public discourse in Indonesia's transitional democracy. Employing a Critical Content Analysis (CCA) approach within a Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough, 2003 and Van Dijk, 2015) framework, this research analyses 336 online news articles from Detik.com and Kompas.com, alongside NGOs and government online publications on their websites published from 2019 to 2022. Using digital tools such as NVivo, the research integrates qualitative and comparative analysis to examine how power, legitimacy, and resistance are discursively constructed. This research proposes a Government Media Society (GMS) framework to reveal a pronounced discursive divide: Government institutions construct opaque and government-oriented narratives to legitimise legal authority. At the same time, civil society actors advocate for digital rights through critical and counter-discourse. Online news media act as intermediaries, balancing diverse perspectives yet often reinforcing dominant narratives. This thesis advances theoretical understanding by introducing the concepts of "hush and shout journalism", which challenge the notion of journalistic neutrality, and the concepts of "discursive reclamation," which positions civil society actors as a site of ideological struggle. Methodologically, this research offers the GMS framework, an innovative and scalable instrument for analysing discursive representation across hybrid or transitional democracies. This research underscores the importance of comparative discourse analysis in scrutinising power and resistance in different contexts within the proposed framework.