POWER RELATIONS IN JOKOWI’S FAKE DIPLOMA ISSUE: A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

Abstract

The rumour that Joko Widodo, the former President of Republic of Indonesia, used a fake diploma to run for gubernatorial and pesidential elections has long been a widespread national issue. This problem seems hardly resolved since the subject firmly refuses to show the document of his authentic diploma to public. He even prefered proving the availability of his diploma in different ways, such as frequently attending reunions, asking his classmates to demonstrate their identical diplomas, meeting his supervisor, showing some photographs of his student’s activities, and creating various narrations to persuade people. This research aimed at revealing the power relations behind the narratives constructed to counter's Jokowi's fake diploma issue. It is particularly purposed to find out what authorities involved in the production of the discourses and how power relations present in the contents of the discourses. The method of this study is qualitative-descriptive with the data are in the form of texts constituting the statements from the authorities regarding the issue. The data were collected by documentation technique from three different online media which quote the statements. The selected data were then analyzed by using the three-dimensional model of critical discourse analysis from Fairclough (1992) with the process following interactive model of analysis from Miles and Huberman (1994). The result of analysis shows that the authorities involving in the counter-narrative productions of Jokowi’s fake diploma issue are the lawyer, the rector, and the police. From particular words and expressions used in the statements, it is found that power relations contributed to the production of the discourses. All the statements were clearly attempted to persuade people on the authenticity of Jokowi's diploma even though there were not sufficient evidences had by the speakers compared to those belonged to the accusers.