Politeness after virality: Pragmatic norms, moral judgment, and digital citizenship among Indonesian youth

Budhi Santoso

doi:10.67490/ijlc.v1i3.1009

Authors

Budhi Santoso Universitas Islam Negeri Raden Fatah Palembang Author

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.67490/ijlc.v1i3.1009

Keywords:

Cyberpragmatics, Digital citizenship, Moral judgment, Politeness, Virality

Abstract

Background: Viral social media events in Indonesia increasingly transform everyday speech into public objects of politeness judgment where humour, insult, apology, and correction are evaluated through visibility, authority, and digital citizenship. Objective: This study examines how pragmatic norms, moral judgment, and civic responsibility are negotiated in youth-oriented Indonesian digital discourse after viral controversy. Method: This study applies qualitative cyberpragmatic discourse analysis supported by corpus-assisted coding of 15 public coded segments drawn from verified news reports, contextual digital-governance documents, and scholarly references on politeness, netiquette, virality, and online morality. Results: The pragmatic profile shows that politeness after virality is organised around civic-netiquette governance, cyberpragmatic benchmarking, overt face-threat, and repair-oriented politeness. Moral judgment appears not only as blame and outrage but also as apology demand, sympathy, compensation, and restorative repair. Digital citizenship emerges as a contested orientation in which responsible governance, interpretive competence, punitive spectatorship, and relational repair compete to define acceptable participation. Implication: These findings suggest that Indonesian digital citizenship requires proportional criticism, pragmatic literacy, and ethical restraint rather than mere avoidance of impolite words. Novelty: This study advances a post-viral politeness framework that integrates cyberpragmatics, moral spectatorship, and digital citizenship within Indonesian youth-oriented online publics.

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