PEMAKNAAN MULTIMODAL PADA UNGGAHAN INSTAGRAM YANG DIANGGAP MENGANDUNG TINDAK PENGHINAAN DALAM RANAH BEAUTY PAGEANT INDONESIA

Abstract

The proliferation of memes and posts on Instagram featuring beauty pageant participants has raised concerns about potential violations of Indonesia’s Electronic Information and Transactions Law regarding defamation. Not only through visual media, but also through captions in these memes, which reinforce the likelihood of insulting conduct in the online sphere. Therefore, a multimodal semiotic analysis within the realm of digital forensics is necessary to interpret both the visual and verbal modes in each post. However, such studies remain limited, and this research seeks to fill that gap. This study employs Halliday’s (1978) social semiotic framework for the verbal mode, Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2006) visual semiotics for the visual mode, and the intersemiosis model of Carey Jewitt, Jeff Bezemer, and Kay O’Halloran (2016) to explore the interactions between modes in meaning-making. This multimodal perspective enables a comprehensive analysis of the relationships between text and image in digital posts that may be insulting. Using a qualitative-descriptive approach and a case-study technique, five Instagram posts were sampled from pageant fan accounts with over 50,000 followers. The research data comprise textual fragments, captions and emoticons, as the verbal mode, and meme images and video screenshots as the visual mode. Data analysis proceeded in three stages: (1) categorization of the verbal mode according to Hallidayan metafunctions; (2) classification of the visual mode according to Kress and van Leeuwen’s principles of representational, interactive, and compositional meaning; and (3) intermodal interaction analysis via intersemiosis to uncover insulting intent. The findings confirm that multimodal relationships in the dataset demonstrate how interactions between verbal and visual modes can reinforce insulting elements. Although this study does not adjudicate the legal status of the posts, its findings underscore the critical importance of a deep understanding of text– image relations as a foundation for further academic inquiry and for the legal enforcement of defamation in the digital realm.