Reframing Disaster: Palm Oil Companies' Narratives and Popular Media through an Ecolinguistic Lens after the Sumatra Flood and Landslide Crisis

Abstract

This study examines the discursive strategies employed by the palm oil industry and popular media to mitigate reputational damage and shape public perception following the Sumatra flash flood at the end of November 2025. Utilizing an ecolinguistic lens and Ecological Discourse Analysis (EDA), the research analyzes a dual-track corpus: crisis communication materials from two palm oil companies, PT Perkebunan Nusantara IV (PTPN IV PalmCo) and Musim Mas Group, and palm oil-focused episodes of the popular children's animation series Upin & Ipin broadcast between 2024 and 2026. Drawing on Martin and White's Appraisal Theory and Stibbe's ecolinguistic framework, the study investigates how these narratives reframe environmental accountability. The findings reveal convergent patterns across two distinct discourse tracks. In the corporate track, the palm oil companies employ positive Judgments of Capacity and Tenacity to emphasize their rapid post-disaster infrastructural interventions, while employing erasure (The Void, The Mask, and The Trace) to reframe a human-induced ecological crisis as an unavoidable

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