<![CDATA[Algorithmic mediation of public spheres has changed how we construct, negotiate and remember political legitimacy after leaders have left formal office. This study explores the visual contestation of the post-power legitimacy of former Indonesian president Joko Widodo by algorithmic publics across TikTok, Instagram and X from 2025–202628. Using a qualitative design within a critically perceived constructivist paradigm, the study adopts Visual Critical Discourse Analysis (VCDA) as an analytical framework to conduct textual, discursive and sociocultural analysis of digital visual artefacts. These findings suggest political memory is reinscribed and contested through three interrelated modes of visual practice: participatory parody, official political representation, and aestheticized iconography. Viewing such visual practices not only as acts of communication, but also as ways in which algorithmic publics contend for symbolic authority and remake collective memory while redefining the legitimacy of post-power. This paper theorizes that political legitimacy in digitally mediated bottom-up societies is no longer solely produced through institutional authority but increasingly drawn out of pure social interactions among different networked publics, algorithmic visibility and visual contestation. Ultimately, this research adds to digital sociology by theorizing algorithmic political memory as a dynamic mechanism that continuously re-assembles parts of democratic representation across Indonesia’s social media.]]>
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