Communicative discourses and ideological practices in Indonesia’s digital political spheres

Discursive spaces are necessary for maintaining democratic politics. Media serves as one of the key components in attempting to preserve the sanity of democracy and protect it from oligarchic practices entrenched in many political parties and the Indonesian government. The present research is aimed at understanding the representation of deliberative democracy in the public sphere by analysing the podcasts presented in the Akbar Faizal Uncensored (AFU) YouTube channel and examining the ideological practices that unfold in the podcasts. This study employed the qualitative method and critical paradigm approach while applying John Fiske’s semiotic analysis, with a focus on texts obtained from the AFU podcast. This podcast represents a possible case of deliberative democracy in practice. According to Jurgen Habermas, deliberative democracy pertains to all public policies carried out and legitimated through discourses held in public spheres. The YouTube podcasts of AFU have the potential to represent deliberative democracy as intended by its mission. The research findings suggest that although the AFU YouTube podcasts can indeed represent democracy, these podcasts cannot be considered representations of deliberations (deliberative democracy) in a comprehensive manner since no legitimacy was reached at the end of the discussions. The AFU YouTube podcasts are by no means an unadulterated public sphere, yet they can function as a conduit between public spheres in communities and the authority, which in this case, is the government.