Constructing And Destabilizing Ideology In A Media Poster On The Free Nutritious Meal Program (Mbg): A Barthes–Derrida Analysis
Keywords:
Visual Communication, Semiotics, Barthes, Derrida, Ideology, Deconstruction, Political Discourse, Media Analysis
Abstract
This study investigates how meaning and ideology are constructed and contested in a media poster featuring Dr. Media Wahyudi Askar in relation to Indonesia’s Free Nutritious Meal Program (MBG). Employing a qualitative visual discourse analysis, the study integrates Roland Barthes’ semiotic framework and Jacques Derrida’s deconstructive approach to examine how visual political communication shapes public understanding of policy issues. The findings reveal that the poster constructs authority, credibility, and policy legitimacy through interconnected visual and textual signs that operate at the levels of denotation, connotation, and myth. At the same time, a deconstructive reading demonstrates that these meanings are neither fixed nor self-evident but remain dependent on unstable oppositions, exclusions, and alternative interpretations. The study concludes that visual political communication actively participates in the production and negotiation of ideological meanings rather than merely reflecting social reality. By combining semiotics and deconstruction, this research contributes a more comprehensive framework for analyzing contemporary visual discourse and offers insight into how authority, legitimacy, and public knowledge are constructed and challenged in digital media.
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van Sorge, L. (2025). painting as an embodied act of framing: toward a phenomenological aesthetics with merleau-ponty and derrida. Continental Philosophy Review, 58(3), 469–489. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-025-09694-2
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Vinay, K. C. (2025). deconstruction of binary oppositions in derrida’s literary philosophy. Idealistic Journal of Advanced Research in Progressive Spectrums (IJARPS), 4(02), 159–169. https://journal.ijarps.org/index.php/IJARPS/article/view/837
Woods, E. M. S. (2016). to touch a ghost: derrida’s work of mourning and haptic visuality in three films. Cogent Arts and Humanities, 3(1), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/23311983.2016.1197871
Alasuutari, P. (2018). authority as epistemic capital. Journal of Political Power, 11(2), 165–190. https://doi.org/10.1080/2158379X.2018.1468151
Anderson, C. W. (2020). practice , interpretation , and meaning in today ’ s digital media ecosystem. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077699020916807
Balluff, P., Ho, J. C. ting, Gruber, J. B., Palicki, S., Palmer, A., Rossi, L., Shklovski, I., & Chan, C. hong. (2026). newer, larger, better? a critique of the unreflective llm adoption in communication research. Political Communication, 43(3), 572–581. https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2026.2618486
Barthes, R. (2020). colouring, degree zero. Theory, Culture and Society, 37(4), 35–42. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276420911431
Benjaminsen, T. A. (2021). depicting decline : images and myths in environmental discourse analysis. Landscape Research, 46(2), 211–225. https://doi.org/10.1080/01426397.2020.1737663
Bishop, R. (2020). a circle of fragments: barthes, burgin, and the interruption of rhetoric. Theory, Culture and Society, 37(4), 135–165. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276420911436
Bock, M. A. (2020). theorising visual framing : contingency , materiality and ideology ideology. Visual Studies, 00(00), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1080/1472586X.2020.1715244
Boer, T. De. (2021). updating public accountability : a conceptual framework of voluntary accountability. Public Management Review, 00(00), 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/14719037.2021.2006973
Brüggemann, M., van Eck, C. W., Gelovani, S., Meyer, H., Muddiman, A., Pröschel, L., & Wessler, H. (2026). what kind of depolarization should we aim for? making communication transformative. Political Communication, 43(3), 564–571. https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2026.2617224
Creswell, J. W. (2013). research design; qualitative and quantitative (p. 273).
de Vreese, C. H., & Tromble, R. (2026). movingtTargets, moving politics: the state of play in social media data access. Political Communication, 00(00), 1–4. https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2026.2681041
Derrida, J. (2002). wri t i n g a n d d i ff e re n c e.
Emsley, I. (2021). causality , poetics , and grammatology : the role of computation in machine seeing. AI & SOCIETY, 36(4), 1225–1231. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-020-01061-4
Fathaigh, C. Ó. (2026). ‘ the new bourdieu ’: the public intellectual in the shared interventions of pierre bourdieu and jacques derrida ‘ the new bourdieu ’: the public intellectual in the shared interventions of pierre bourdieu and jacques. International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 34(1), 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/09672559.2025.2519267
Fjørtoft, T. N., & Michailidou, A. (2021). beyond expertise : the public construction of legitimacy for EU agencies. https://doi.org/10.1080/2474736X.2021.2018266
Fox, C. A. (2022). visualizing politics in indonesia: the design and distribution of election posters. International Journal of Communication, 16, 4187–4209.
Fox, J. (2020). perspectives of experts-by-experience : an exploration of lived experience involvement in social work education experience involvement in social work education abstract. Social Work Education, 00(00), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/02615479.2020.1861244
Grange, H., & Lian, O. S. (2022). “doors started to appear:” a methodological framework for analyzing visuo-verbal data drawing on roland barthes’s classification of text-image relations. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 21. https://doi.org/10.1177/16094069221084433
Harjuniemi, T. (2022). the “ hierarchy of credibility ” among economic experts : journalists ’ perceptions of experts with varying institutional affiliations the “ hierarchy ofcCredibility ” among economic experts : journalists ’ perceptions of experts with varying institutiona. 2786. https://doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2021.1910985
Intemann, K. (2024). value transparency and promoting warranted trust in science communication. Synthese, 203(2), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-023-04471-1
Jin, H. (2019). deconstructive hermeneutics of nature and culture : thinking after derrida. https://doi.org/10.1177/1206331219828287
Koivunen, A., & Vuorelma, J. (2022). trust and authority in the age of mediatised politics. European Journal of Communication, 37(4), 393–408. https://doi.org/10.1177/02673231211072653
Lacković, N. (2020). thinking with digital images in the post-truth era : a method in critical media literacy. 442–462.
Lilleker, D. (2014). political campaigning and communication. http://www.springer.com/series/14546
Mestre, J. (2026). technology and the home: heidegger, levinas, and derrida. Philosophy and Technology, 39(1), 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-026-01053-0
Mihelj, S., Kondor, K., & Štětka, V. (2022). establishing trust in experts during a crisis: expert trustworthiness and media use during the covid-19 pandemic. Science Communication, 44(3), 292–319. https://doi.org/10.1177/10755470221100558
Nheri, C. (2026). writing under erasure : derrida and the form of philosophical thought. Cogent Arts & Humanities, 13(1). https://doi.org/10.1080/23311983.2026.2646794
Olteanu, A. (2021). multimodal modeling: bridging biosemiotics and social semiotics. Biosemiotics, 14(3), 783–805. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12304-021-09463-7
Pavanini, M. (2022). multistability and derrida’s différance: investigating the relations between postphenomenology and stiegler’s general organology. Philosophy and Technology, 35(1), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-022-00501-x
Perusset, A. (2022). posterity of saussure’s sign in the study of cultural meanings: a dialogue between Barthes and Hjelmslev. Sign Systems Studies, 50(1), 38–53. https://doi.org/10.12697/SSS.2022.50.1.03
Przyborski, A., & Slunecko, T. (2020). understanding media communication: on the significance of iconic thinking for a praxeological model of communication. SAGE Open, 10(3). https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244020952064
Rakowski, R., Kowalikova, P., & Polak, P. (2025). digital mythologies. Society, 62(5), 677–686. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-025-01125-5
Rudolf, D. B. (2022). stories you cannot defeat! political myths as cultural integration and legitimation strategies of autocratic regimes. Zeitschrift Fur Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft, 16(1), 31–56. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12286-022-00520-0
Santos, F. P. (2023). showing legitimacy: the strategic employment of visuals in the legitimation of new organizations. Journal of Management Inquiry, 32(1), 50–75. https://doi.org/10.1177/10564926211050785
Sugiyono, P. D. (2016). metode penelitian kuantitatif kualitatif dan r&d (19th ed.). ALFABETA BANDUNG.
Tri, K., Agustia, S., Luh, N., Beratha, S., & Pastika, I. W. (2025). the semiotics of smartphone advertising : myth and ideology in youtube commercials. Cogent Arts & Humanities, 12(1). https://doi.org/10.1080/23311983.2025.2553167
van Sorge, L. (2025). painting as an embodied act of framing: toward a phenomenological aesthetics with merleau-ponty and derrida. Continental Philosophy Review, 58(3), 469–489. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-025-09694-2
Verboord, M. (2022). validation repertories of media audiences in the digital age: examining the legitimate authority of cultural mediators. Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, 99(2), 440–462. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077699020952117
Vigsö, O. (2026). visual political communication. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.1556
Vinay, K. C. (2025). deconstruction of binary oppositions in derrida’s literary philosophy. Idealistic Journal of Advanced Research in Progressive Spectrums (IJARPS), 4(02), 159–169. https://journal.ijarps.org/index.php/IJARPS/article/view/837
Woods, E. M. S. (2016). to touch a ghost: derrida’s work of mourning and haptic visuality in three films. Cogent Arts and Humanities, 3(1), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/23311983.2016.1197871
Published
2026-07-08
How to Cite
Handini Aprillia Ros, & Mayang Pipit. (2026). Constructing And Destabilizing Ideology In A Media Poster On The Free Nutritious Meal Program (Mbg): A Barthes–Derrida Analysis. International Journal of Technology and Education Research, 4(03), 156-172. https://doi.org/10.63922/ijeter.v4i03.4949
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