A MULTIMODAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF POLITICIANS’ DIGITAL POSTERS ON INSTAGRAM AHEAD OF INDONESIA’S 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

Although the General Elections Commission (Komisi Pemilihan Umum: KPU) has not released the official campaign schedules yet, some political parties, politicians, or root supporters have initiated pre-political campaigns by posting digital posters of pre-presidential candidates on Instagram to showcase their self-image and self-branding. Of the five pre-presidential candidates’ digital posters analyzed; Ganjar Pranowo, Muhaimin Iskandar, Airlangga Hartarto, Prabowo Subianto, and Anies Baswedan, it is found that the politicians have different linguistic, visual, and spatial strategies, different realization processes of their strategies, and different rationales to employ their strategies. Their linguistic, visual, and spatial strategies are intended to communicate political messages and persuade both decided and undecided electorates. Visual aesthetics and high-resolution displays offered by Instagram make the electorates potentially persuaded by the politicians without evaluating the truth behind their self-presentation. This study is very beneficial for the electorates because it unmasks politicians' self-values, ideas, and ideology behind their linguistic, visual, and spatial presentations by analyzing their connotators of meaning. In terms of linguistic presentation, this study analyzes politicians’ dictions, concealment strategies, representation of transitivity, grammatical positioning of actions, and genres of communication. In terms of visual presentation, this study analyzes politicians’ attributes, poses and behavior, social distance, and salience. In terms of spatial presentation, this study analyzes politicians’ physical arrangement of the elements on their digital posters. Thus, it is suggested that the government should involve linguists or semioticians to give political education to society. The information provided by them must be applicable to people’s political decisions before voting for a certain candidate in Indonesia’s 2024 Presidential Election