<![CDATA[This study examines how social criticism of digital economic speculation is constructed in the 2026 Marjan Ramadan commercial titled “Nakula & Sadewa: Guardians of the Digital City” using Roland Barthes’s semiotic framework of denotation, connotation, and myth. The research question is how denotation, connotation, and myth are constructed in each scene across both episodes of the advertisement, and what social critique emerges through the system of signs employed. This study employs a descriptive-interpretive qualitative method by analyzing purposefully selected scenes, which encompass five categories: the detection of corruption in the financial system; the magnification of the antagonist’s figure due to crypto speculation; the resulting urban destruction; the failure of physical and technological interventions; and resolution through spiritual power. The results indicate that these commercials construct social criticism of greed and economic speculation through non-human antagonists, which shifts blame away from concrete social actors while normalizing technological failure and spiritual victory as myths. Further findings indicate that this critique tends to be depoliticized with regard to structural issues and instrumentalized to strengthen the brand’s presence during both moments of failure and victory, consistent with patterns found in previous research on Marjan advertisements.]]>
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