Anies Baswedan and Indigenous-ness in Seword.com: Anti-Out-Group Bias in a Democratized Online Sphere

This paper investigates discourses related to the notion of pribumi (indigenous people) and Anies Baswedan offered through opinion articles published by Seword.com. This opinion portal has been actively criticizing Anies Baswedan, the Governor of Jakarta since his candidacy for the 2017 Jakarta Gubernatorial Election, the hardest fought and most segregating election ever held in Indonesia. The campaign and related events leading to the election and afterward had consumed the attention not only Jakarta voters but also most of the Indonesian people. The problem of segregation, the fear of nation disunity, the rise of intolerant discourses and actions, mostly related to religious identity were debated throughout Indonesia. Social media, online news outlets, online pages, blogs and online opinion portals were the boiling venues for such segregating discourses. This warring minds of the public have not ceased after Jakarta Election Commission officially announced Anies Baswedan and Sandiaga Uno as the elected governor and vice governor of Jakarta. It was reflected through the quick, almost instant, online outcry criticizing Anies because of the term pribumi (indigenous people) he used in his acceptance speech as Jakarta Governor on Monday, 16 October 2017. Those critics lambasted Anies as implicitly yet deliberately segregating Jakarta people even more. This research employed critical discourse analysis in investigating how do opinion articles published in Seword.com portray Anies in relation to indigenous people-related issues.