THE REPRESENTATION OF ECOLOGICAL DISCOURSE IN THE COVERAGE OF THE ELECTRIC VEHICLE TRANSITION IN INDONESIAN LOCAL ONLINE MEDIA: A CORPUS-ASSISTED ECOLINGUISTIC STUDY
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21009/ishel.v2i1.72612Keywords:
corpus-assisted discourse studies, ecolinguistics, corpus linguistics, electric vehicles, media ideologyAbstract
The transition to Electric Vehicles (EVs) is frequently framed as the absolute solution to the ecological crisis. This study deconstructs this discourse by investigating how local online media in Indonesia represent the energy transition and legitimize the interests of extractive industries. Employing the Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies (CADS) approach and an Ecolinguistic perspective, this research extracts data from 11 local online media portals (2017–2026). The analysis reveals a dominance of technological and commercial lexicons (e.g., 'motor', 'electricity', 'battery') over ecological vocabulary. A discursive imbalance is identified, wherein the media implements a salience strategy to highlight narratives of economic growth, techno-optimism, and eco-capitalism, while simultaneously executing an erasure of the environmental degradation impacts occurring upstream in the nickel mining industry. This study concludes that the discourse of sustainability in local media is reduced to an economic commodity that serves industrial hegemony, rather than promoting genuine ecological preservation.
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