<![CDATA[ The post-truth era influences how netizens form, legitimize, and reconstruct moral judgments within the digital public sphere. This study aims to analyze the construction and shifting nature of moral legitimacy among netizens in YouTube comments using Norman Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis and to explain its implications for digital citizenship ethics grounded in the values of “Pancasila”. The study employs a qualitative approach based on Fairclough’s three-dimensional model, encompassing text analysis, discursive practice, and social practice. Data were collected via web scraping from the comments sections of two videos on Denny Sumargo’s YouTube channel, representing the pre-clarification and post-clarification phases of the "Yai Mim and Sahara" case. A corpus of 400 comments with the highest engagement levels was compiled, from which 24 comments were purposively selected as the primary units of analysis. The findings reveal that moral legitimacy is constructed through the representation of actors, evaluative strategies, claims to authority, and social sanctioning all of which gain collective resonance within the comments section. Shifts in the configuration of information drive changes in moral legitimacy through the reconstruction of actor representations, evolving evaluative strategies, competition among sources of legitimacy, and the negotiation of meaning via cross-platform intertextuality. This shift indicates a transition from a dominance of emotional resonance toward the emergence of epistemic reflexivity, as some netizens revise their judgments upon encountering new information. These findings demonstrate that digital vigilantism is dynamic, undergoing a reconstruction of legitimacy in response to changing information. The study underscores the importance of strengthening digital citizenship ethics rooted in “Pancasila” values alongside epistemic and discursive responsibility, as a foundation for democratic, civil, and responsible digital participation.]]>
