Counterpublics and haunted publics: Media imaginaries of landscape transformation in Central Kalimantan

This chapter examines media imaginaries surrounding resource commodification in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia, with a focus on events in 2020. It analyses two distinct yet interconnected media events. The first pertains to how the politics of natural resource commodification are debated and how various actors are positioned within these discussions. The second concerns the circulation of accounts of supernatural phenomena. The data include personal online exchanges from 2020–2021; three annual volumes (2018–2020) of a Central Kalimantan newspaper; selected news items from internet-based media (2017–2020); Twitter conversations from 2020 under various keywords; and selected YouTube videos featuring supernatural phenomena published between 2017 and 2020.First, the analysis argues that the Central Kalimantan mediascape is fragmented: established media outlets explicitly represent various state interests while claiming to serve the public, whereas social media discussions and circulating multimedia narratives often provide a counternarrative—if not constitute a counterpublic—serving as platforms for citizens to mobilise and articulate their interests. Second, the chapter introduces a new type of circulating discourse, termed “haunted publics,” in which accounts of supernatural events circulate in ways distinct from conventional counterpublics, yet the emergent effects of this circulation can still generate political critique. Third, consistent with previous research, it shows that discourses on supernatural events and resource politics are interrelated, even when they do not directly engage one another.