Multimodal Portrayal of Joko Widodo on Tempo's Cover Story: A Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis

Abstract

An Indonesian-language Tempo Magazine's cover story published in the September 14, 2019 edition was controversially perceived and interpreted by some parties as an insulting discourse towards Indonesian President Joko Widodo (Jokowi). The cover story in that edition was undeniably motivated by a political issue in Indonesia at the time. The issue was President Jokowi's approval of the new bills for the Corruption Eradication Commission (Indonesian: KPK). In this research, we investigated how the cover story in that edition had portrayed President Jokowi. The Tempo Magazine's cover story was selected as this research data. The cover story consisted of pictorial and linguistic modes. In the analysis, we employed a Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (MCDA) approach to reveal ideological meanings behind those modes. After analyzing them, we found that the cover story had portrayed President Joko Widodo negatively. The negative portrayal came from the silhouette in the pictorial mode and the social actions represented in the linguistic mode. The results of this research can scientifically contribute to answering the question of whether the cover story insulted the Indonesian President or not. Keywords: Cover Story, Insulting Discourse, Joko Widodo, Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis, Visual Grammar.