Arts , Humanities & Social Science

Abstract

Indonesian politics in the last decade has attracted public attention because of the massive use of social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp. Political communication is getting faster, public political participation is getting higher, and people are becoming more politically aware. This positive development is being degraded as social media-mediated politics is distorted due to hoaxes and hate speech. This study uses the perspective of Habermas' communicative action theory to see the position of the intersubjective dialogue on the use of Facebook in Indonesian politics, which is often colored by hate speech over people's identities based on racial dimensions. Facebook's language regarding identity politics is analyzed critically through a hermeneutic approach in order to uncover the political motives behind the use of hate speech in identity politics. Five hermeneutic steps: text reconstruction, text distortion level, text analysis, self emancipation, and text validity claim were used to review the motivation of distorted Facebook text. Based on the principle of communicative action to build understanding for each social actor involved, it seems that political language expressed in a narrative manner is not able to lead actors to agree with each other. In the case of political distortion due to identity politics, the main obstacle is intersubjective consensus because the text's truth claims are based on two themes, which contradict each other, namely: the stigma of exclusive collective identity and the affirmation of inclusive collective identity. Arab identity is exclusively characterized: political opposition, riding on the Prophet for political gain, using religion as a mask, wearing clerical robes to fool the public, often spreading slander, hoaxes, hate speech, and anti-Chinese. Meanwhile, Chinese Identity is described as inclusive: doesn't talk much, focuses on work, doesn't ride religion for politics, and likes to help. Exclusive stigma and inclusive affirmations have the potential to undermine consensus failure Communicative action.