Agents of post-truth: a study of truth manipulation by Indra Kenz and his supporters

Indra Kenz is an influencer famous for his involvement in Binomo’s viral fraud case. Indra claims that Binomo is a safe trading application, while in reality, the Indonesian Trade Regulatory Body (Bappebti) declares that it is an illegal gambling application. Fairclough’s three-dimensional CDA reveals how Indra’s clarification arguments show symptoms of a post-truth phenomenon where objective truth loses its significance compared to emotional judgment and personal beliefs. His misinformation via social media was so effective, that it motivated people to voice their support on Instagram, even after he was declared guilty of causing 144 victims to lose a total of 83 billion rupiahs. Among thousands of comments on his self-defense post, three people earned thousands of likes and support from fellow netizens after creating three comments that benefit Indra. These people took some elements from Indra’s self-defense and elaborated them into a victim-blaming discourse, a perpetrator-excusing discourse, and an institutional distrust discourse. By further performing CDA on the three comments, it was found that these netizens also show symptoms of truth manipulation, qualifying Indra’s case and the aftermath of it as post-truth phenomena.

CARINA FERNANDITHA Liem Satya Limanta (Advisor 1); Dwi Setiawan (Examination Committee 1); Liliek Soelistyo (Examination Committee 2) Universitas Kristen Petra English Digital Theses Graduate Thesis Tesis/Theses Tesis No. 01010040/MS/2024; Carina Fernanditha (A21220003) DISCOURSE ANALYSIS-SOCIAL ASPECTS; ONLINE MANIPULATION--SOCIAL ASPECTS

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