Media Exposing Sea Privatization and Corporate–Government Power Relations Affecting Coastal Communities through Investigative Reporting on “Pagar Makan Lautan”

Muh. Syaiful (Universitas Indonesia, Jakarta)
Muhammad Yunus Zulkifli (Universitas Indonesia, Jakarta)

Jurnal Profetik
Vol. 18 No. 2 (2025): Vol. 18 No. 2 (2025)

This study aims to explore the discursive construction of power relation conflicts involving corporations and the government in sea privatization, as portrayed in Tempo’s “Pagar Makan Lautan (The Fences Eat the Sea)”. This study adopted a critical-constructivist paradigm (Kincheloe, 2005; Leon-Guerrero, 2018; Levitt, 2021) to examine how power relations were constructed and naturalized in the context of the sea privatization. The critical-constructivist approach was particularly apt for this study because it combined a focus on knowledge as socially constructed with explicit attention to political economy, ideology, and collective action (Zotzmann & O’Regan, 2023). This study employed methodological frameworks, Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) by Norman Fairclough (1995) and Social Semiotics by Halliday (1993), focusing on three levels: textual analysis (field, tenor, and mode of discourse), discursive practice, and sociocultural practice. The findings reveal an unequal power relationship between corporations (business actors), the state (government), and coastal communities (fishers). The analysis demonstrates that metaphors, satire, and evaluative diction are used to criticize unequal power relations in the sea privatization. At the discursive-practice level, the report is shaped by investigative work, including examination of legal documents, field observations, and interviews with coastal communities. At the sociocultural level, the coverage reflects broader social, political, and economic inequalities, highlighting how spatial conflict arises from competition over maritime resources among powerful states and corporate actors. Theoretically, this study contributes to Indonesian media scholarship by extending critical discourse analysis to contemporary coastal conflicts, an area that remains limited in current research. In practice, this study offers insights for coastal and marine policy by showing how journalism can expose gaps among government regulation, corporate interests, and community rights, supporting calls for more transparent and participatory governance. This study is limited by its single-text corpus, potential media framing biases, and lack of comparison with other news sources.