Ecological Worldviews in Indonesian Media Discourse on Rubber and Oil Palm Plantations: A Critical Ecolinguistic Study

Abstract

Plantation commodities occupy a central place in Indonesia's development narrative, yet the language used to describe them is rarely neutral. This study examines how Indonesian online media construct competing ecological worldviews in their coverage of oil palm and rubber plantations, drawing on ecolinguistics and critical discourse analysis. Thirty articles published between 2019 and 2024 across national, local, and environmentally focused outlets were analyzed using a coding framework built around Stibbe's distinction between instrumental and intrinsic ecological values. The analysis shows a marked asymmetry: oil palm coverage is dominated by a vocabulary of productivity, efficiency, and investment that positions land and ecosystems chiefly as economic assets, while rubber coverage more often draws on language of balance, continuity, and local knowledge that treats nature as a living system with its own worth. This polarization suggests that different commodities are anchored in distinct ideological frames, with oil palm discourse aligning closely with instrumental, growth-oriented narratives and rubber discourse offering a comparatively marginal but ecologically richer alternative. The findings extend critical ecolinguistic scholarship on development discourse in the Global South and point to the need for media practitioners and policymakers to frame plantation development in terms that hold economic and ecological considerations together, rather than treating them as competing priorities.