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

This chapter explores how media narratives contribute to the formation of publics around landscape transformation in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia, analysing events from 2020. By examining print journalism, online news, social media discussions, and videos, the author traces the logics of circulation emerging in response to resource commodification in this frontier setting. Two distinct media events structure the analysis: the arrest of a Dayak community leader protesting illegal forest clearing by a palm oil company, which generated a Twitter counterpublic intensively indexing state authorities; and supernatural occurrences at a plywood factory, which circulated through sensationalist media and ultimately enabled critical coverage of the company's operations.The chapter makes three interrelated arguments. First, Central Kalimantan's fragmented mediascape simultaneously upholds state interests through mainstream channels while allowing for citizen mobilisation and indirect political critique through social media and circulating narratives. Second, the author introduces "haunted publics" as a distinct modality of public formation, where circulation depends on the imagined agency of supernatural actors rather than the rational deliberation typically required of counterpublics, yet can nonetheless transpose to official discourse and enable political critique. Third, the chapter argues that frontiers are not simply places of rapid transformation but generative conditions from which new publics with novel logics of circulation emerge—publics that participate directly in the making and unmaking of frontier spaces. These findings contribute to anthropological debates on the nature of publics and their relationship to state authority in contexts where conditions for conventional bourgeois public spheres are absent.