<![CDATA[The “Purbaya Vs Everybody” episode of the Kontroversi program on Metro TV’s YouTube channel illustrates how political discourse is constructed, circulated, and negotiated in a digital media environment. This study aims to examine the construction of political discourse and public participation surrounding the controversy using Norman Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis integrated with Andrew Feenberg’s technopolitical perspective. A qualitative descriptive approach was employed, with data obtained from the episode’s dialogue, statements, narratives, visual elements, and selected audience responses in the YouTube comment section. The analysis focuses on text, discursive practice, and social practice. The findings indicate that Purbaya is constructed as a central political figure through lexical choices, repetition, the arrangement of competing statements, and the presentation of economic data. The controversy is also reframed from an issue of individual communication style into a broader discussion of economic policy, government communication, and relations among political actors. At the discursive level, YouTube extends the circulation of the program and provides space for audiences to reproduce, negotiate, and reinterpret the discourse. From a technopolitical perspective, the platform functions as an arena that simultaneously opens opportunities for participation and retains institutional and technological constraints. Thus, the case demonstrates that digital political discourse is shaped by the interaction of language, media practices, technology, and power.]]>
