The Discursive Construction of “Poor” in Timothy Ronald’s YouTube Content: A Critical Discourse Analysis Using Norman Fairclough’s Model

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-622-2_2How to use a DOI?

Keywords

critical discourse analysis; financial influencer; ideology; poverty; YouTube

Abstract

Financial influencers have become influential actors in shaping how young Indonesians understand money, success, and poverty. Among them, Timothy Ronald stands out for blunt, confrontational narratives that frame wealth and poverty as products of individual mindset, a framing that risks normalizing the view that poverty is a personal failure while obscuring the structural roots of inequality. This study analyzes how the discourse of “poor” (miskin) is constructed in Timothy Ronald’s YouTube content. The study contributes to the application of critical discourse analysis to new media and to scholarship on the representation of poverty by digital influencers in Indonesia. It employs a qualitative approach using Norman Fairclough’s three-dimensional model of critical discourse analysis, covering text, discursive practice, and social practice. Data were drawn from seven purposively selected videos that explicitly discuss poverty, the “poor mindset,” wealth, and financial success; the videos were transcribed verbatim and coded in two stages by two coders and the researcher through consensus coding. The findings show that, at the textual level, poverty is represented as an individual fault through pejorative labels and metaphors such as “disease,” “virus,” and “competency test.” The speaker builds a hierarchical relation with the audience that is legitimized by his wealth, and the identity of the poor is constructed as morally and intellectually deficient. These patterns articulate an ideology of meritocratic individualism that is amplified by YouTube’s platform logic. The study concludes that motivational-financial content is not merely educative but ideological, constructing poverty as a personal failure rather than a structural problem.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Adib Kurniawan
AU  - Kun Sila Ananda
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/10/06
TI  - The Discursive Construction of “Poor” in Timothy Ronald’s YouTube Content: A Critical Discourse Analysis Using Norman Fairclough’s Model
BT  - Proceedings of the International Conference on Communication, Digital Ecosystem, and Society (ICODES 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 3
EP  - 12
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-622-2_2
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-622-2_2
ID  - Kurniawan2026
ER  -