Homeless media versus local media: Contesting authority in the digital platform era
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25139/jsk.v10i2.11863Keywords:
Homeless Media, Local Media, Digital Platforms, Media AuthoritiesAbstract
This study critically examined the erosion of institutional authority in information production amid the rise of digital platforms, focusing on the contestation between local media and homeless media in East Java, Indonesia. Drawing on a qualitative multiple case study of BlokBojonegoro and Wartabromo alongside Instagram-based homeless media accounts (@lingkarjonegoro and @seputarpasuruan), the research combines passive observational netnography with semi-structured interviews to trace shifts in communicative power. The findings suggest that homeless media function as algorithmically driven actors sustaining a parasitic–symbiotic relationship with platform infrastructures. Comment section analysis reveals how netizen discourse is shaped by affective and viral dynamics, marked by accusation, amplification, and identity signalling over rational deliberation, which renders institutional credibility increasingly subordinate to algorithmic visibility. Unaffiliated media consistently dominate the breaking news phase, whilst verified reporting from institutional actors arrives too late to influence public perception, exposing a structural disadvantage that compounds the broader crisis of media legitimacy. This crisis is felt most acutely amongst younger audiences, for whom authority is no longer anchored in journalistic standards but reconstituted through likes, shares, and follower counts, such that trust itself becomes effectively commodified. The study argues that digital platforms have recast media legitimacy as a form of algorithmic sovereignty, compelling local media to navigate the tension between editorial integrity and platform-driven survival. The result is an ecosystem defined not by coexistence but by unstable competition, in which authority and truth are perpetually renegotiated within the attention economy.
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