Selected Political Hoax Cases on Social Media: Multimodal in Forensic Linguistics
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Abstract
This study explores the complexities of political hoaxes on social media through the lens of multimodal forensic linguistics, focusing on integrating verbal and visual elements in the construction and dissemination of misinformation. By analyzing five prominent political hoaxes in the Indonesian context, the research applies a multimodal pragmatic framework, incorporating semantic representations of an individual mode, semantic representation of multimodal mode, and inferential meanings elaborated using post-truth escapism to examine the mechanisms of hoax narrative construction. The findings reveal how hoaxes use multimodal meanings across modes to manipulate public opinion and foster post-truth realities. The study highlights the critical role of multimodal elements, such as visual mode combined with emotive language in verbal mode, to reinforce hoaxes and shape ideologically biased narratives. It further discusses the implications of these findings for forensic linguistic analysis, emphasizing the need for refined methodologies that incorporate both verbal and visual modes in legal discourse. The study contributes to the growing field of multimodal forensic linguistics by offering a comprehensive approach to analyzing political hoaxes and their strategy for eroding trust in factual information.
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TRI ASTUTI, Wulan; MULYADI, Ari.
Selected Political Hoax Cases on Social Media: Multimodal in Forensic Linguistics.
Policy & Governance Review, [S.l.], v. 9, n. 1, p. 44-63, feb. 2025.
ISSN 2580-4820.
Available at: <https://journal.iapa.or.id/pgr/article/view/1190>. Date accessed: 26 mar. 2025.
doi: https://doi.org/10.30589/pgr.v9i1.1190.
Section
Articles
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
References
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Agustina, I. F., Ali, Z. Z., Sakirman, S., et. al. (2023). Political Hoaxes in the Post-Truth Era: An Islamic Political Analysis. Al-Istinbath: Jurnal Hukum Islam, 8(2), 645–666. https://doi. org/10.29240/jhi.v8i2.8457
Alam, F., Cresci, S.,Chakraborty, T., Silvestri, F., Dimitrov, D., Martino, G. D. S. M., Shaar, S., Firooz, H., & Nakov, P. (2022). A Survey on Multimodal Disinformation Detection. In Proceedings of the 29th International Conference on Computational Linguistics.6625–6643. https://aclanthology.org/2022.coling-1.576/
Balmas, M. (2014). When Fake News Becomes Real. Communication Research, 41(3), 430–454. https://doi.org/10.1177/0093650212453600
Chen, A., & Machin, D. (2014). The local and the global in the visual design of a Chinese women’s lifestyle magazine: a multimodal critical discourse approach. Visual Communication, 13(3), 287–301. https://doi.org/10.1177/1470357214530059
Cohen, S. (2002). Folk Devils and Moral Panics (3rd ed.). Routledge.
Coulthard, M., & Johnson, A. (2007). An Introduction to Forensic Linguistics: Language in Evidence. Routledge.
Dicerto, S. (2018). Mu lt imodal P rag matics and Translation. Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69344-6
Febriyanti, S., Wagiran, W (2021). Hoax News on the 2019 Presidential Election Campaign on Social Media. Seloka: Jurnal Pendidikan Bahasa dan Sastra Indonesia. 10(2). 141-149. https://doi.org/10.15294/seloka.v10i2.49262
Gibbons, J. (2003). Foren sic Ling uist ics: An Introduction to Language in the Justice System Language in Society. Wiley-Blackwell.
Haqqi, A. (2020). Propaganda Firehose of Falsehood pada Pemilu 2019 di Indonesia. WACANA: Jurnal Ilmiah Ilmu Komunikasi. 19(2) .https://doi.org/10.32509/.v19i2.1058
Heydon, G. (2019). Researching Forensic Linguistics. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429290640
Huang, L. (2021a). Toward multimodal corpus pragmatics: Rationale, case, and agenda. Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, 36(1), 101–114. https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqz080
Huang, L. (2021b). Toward Multimodal Pragmatics: A Study of Illocutionary Force in Chinese Situated Discourse. Routledge. https://doi. org/10.4324/9781003251774
Kalpokas, I. (2019). A Political Theory of Post-Truth. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97713-3
Kholid, K., I.K.D, L., Sudipa, I. N. (2021). The Hoax News Text On Social Media: A Critical Discourse Study. International Journal of English Language Studies, 3(10), 14-21. https://doi.org/10.32996/ijels.2021.3.10.3
Kress, G., & van Leeuwen, T. (1996). Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design (1ed.). Routledge.
Kress, G., & van Leeuwen, T. (2006). Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design (2 ed.). Routledge.
Lazer, D. M., Baum, M. A., Benkler, Y., Berinsky, A. J., Greenhill, K. M., Menczer, F., Metzger, M. J., Nyhan, B., Pennycook, G., Rothschild, D., Schudson, M., Sloman, S. A., Sunstein, C. R., Thorson, E. A., Watts, D. J., & Zittrain, J. L. (2018). The Science of Fake News. Science, 359(6380), 1094–1096. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aao2998
Ledin, P., & Machin, D. (2019). Doing critical discourse studies with multimodality: from metafunctions to materiality. Critical Discourse Studies, 16(5), 497–513. https:// doi.org/10.1080/17405904.2018.1468789
Lin, Y.-L. (2017). Co-occurrence of speech and gestures: A multimodal corpus linguistic approach to intercultural interaction. Journal of Pragmatics, 117, 155–167. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.pragma.2017.06.014
Martinec, R., & Salway, A. (2005). A System for Image- text Relations in New (and Old) Media. Visual Communication, 4(3), 337–371. https://doi. org/10.1177/1470357205055928
Matassi, M., Mitchelstein, E., & Boczkowski, P. (2022). Social media repertoires: Social structure and platform use. The Information Society, 38(2), 133–146. https://doi.org/10.1080/01972243.2022.2028208
Matoesian, G. M. (2010). Multimodalit y and forensic linguistics: Multimodal aspects of victim’s narrative in direct examination (1st ed.). Routledge.
Matoesian, G. & Gilbert, K. (2023). Practicing Linguistics Without a License: Multimodal Oratory in Legal Performance. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. https://doi. org/10.1515/9783111025575
Moya Guijarro, J., & Pinar Sanz, M. J. (2008). Compositional, interpersonal, and representational meanings in a children’s narrative. Journal of Pragmatics, 40(9),1601–1619. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2008.04.019
Mubenga, K. S. (2009). Towards a Multimodal Pragmatic Analysis of Film Discourse in Audiovisual Translation. Meta, 54(3), 466–484. https://doi.org/10.7202/038309ar
O’Halloran, K. L. (2008). Systemic functional- multimodal discourse analysis (SF-MDA): Constructing ideational meaning using language and visual imagery. Visual Communication, 7(4), 443–475. https:// doi.org/10.1177/1470357208096210
Pastra, K. (2008). COSMOROE: A cross-media relations framework for modeling multimedia dialectics. Multimedia Systems, 14(5), 299–323. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00530-008-0142-0
Pérez-Curiel, C., & Molpeceres, A. M. V. (2020).Impact of political discourse on the dissemination of hoaxes about COVID-19. Revista Latina, 78, 65–97. https://doi.org/10.4185/RLCS-2020-1469
Schmidt, A. L., Zollo, F., Del Vicario, M., Bessi, A., Scala, A., Caldarelli, G., Stanley, H. E., & Quattrociocchi, W. (2017). Anatomy of news consumption on Facebook. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(12), 3035–3039. https: //doi.org/10.1073/ pnas.1617052114
Shelke, S., & Attar, V. (2019). Source detection of rumor in social network: A review. Online Social Networks and Media, 9, 30–42. https:// doi.org/10.1016/j.osnem.2018.12.001
Shuy, R. W. (1993). Language Crimes. Blackwell.
Smith, L., & MacLeod, N. (2020). Visual Semiotics in Forensic Contexts: Analyzing Images as Evidence. International Journal of Forensic Linguistics, 32(1), 45-60
Sousa-Silva, R. (2022). Fighting the Fake: A Forensic Linguistic Analysis to Fake News Detection. International Journal of Semiotic Law, 35, 2409–2433. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-022-09901-w
Sperber, D., & Wilson, D. (1995). Relevance: Communication, and Cognition (2nd ed.). Oxford: Blackwell Publisher.
The Jakarta Post. (2019). Prosecutors demand 6 years for Ratna Sarumpaet.
Tiersma, P. M., & Solan, L. M. (2005). Speaking of Crime: The Language of Criminal Justice. University of Chicago Press.
Undang-Undang Nomor 1 Tahun 2024 Tentang Perubahan Kedua Undang-Undang Nomor 11 Tahun 2008 Tentang Informasi Dan Tranaksi Elektronik, Pub. L. No. 8jo. number 45A (2024).
Vicario, M. Del, Quattrociocchi, W., Scala, A., & Zollo, F. (2019). Polarization and Fake News. ACM Transactions on the Web, 13(2), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1145/3316809
Warburton, E. (2020). How Polarised Is Indonesia and Why Does It Matter? In T. Power & E. Warburton (Eds.), Democracy in Indonesia: From Stagnation to Regression?. ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute.
Widian, R., Satya, P. A. N. I. P., & Yazid, S. (2023). Religion in Indonesia’s Elections: An Implementation of a Populist Strategy? Politics and Religion, 16(2), 351–373. https:// doi.org/10.1017/S1755048321000195
Zhou, C., Li, K., & Lu, Y. (2021). Linguistic characteristics and disseminating misinformation in social media: The moderating effect of information richness. Information Processing & Management, 58(6), 102679. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ipm.2021.102679
Zhu, P., Hua, J., Tang, K., Tian, J., Xu, J., & Cui, X. (2024). Multimodal fake news detection through intra-modality feature aggregation and inter-modality semantic fusion. Complex Intelligent Systems, 10(4), 5851–5863. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40747-024-01473-5