When silence becomes violence: a perspective on institutional discourse, digital resistance, and educational justice in Temanggung, Indonesia

15/06/2026

AI Summary

Institutional language perpetrates educational violence by silencing vulnerable students through psychiatric minimisation, temporal trauma displacement, and security-based criminalisation of resistance.
Digital collectivist communities produce counter-hegemonic resistance patterns distinct from Western individualistic polarisation, evidenced across 13,210 social media activities.
Collective Resonance Communication Model (CRCM) reframes cultural influence on digital discourse and demands discourse justice for educational justice, guiding platform, educator training, and policy reform.

AI Summary

Drawing on analysis of the Temanggung school-burning case in Indonesia, where a 13-year-old bullying victim set fire to his school after months of institutional neglect, this perspective identifies three mechanisms of institutional silencing: dismissive minimization through psychiatric discourse, trauma invalidation through temporal displacement, and the criminalization of resistance through security discourse.

Against the backdrop of 13,210 social media activities generated by this case, the evidence suggests that digital communities in collectivist societies develop counter-hegemonic resistance patterns that are fundamentally different from those observed in individualistic contexts, challenging dominant Western assumptions about digital polarization.

The analysis concludes with a call for discourse justice as a precondition for educational justice, and practical implications for platform governance, educator training, and policy reform.

Basic summary

Front Sociol. 2026 May 29;11:1814224. doi: 10.3389/fsoc.2026.1814224. eCollection 2026.

ABSTRACT

Institutional language can function as a mechanism of educational violence, operating not through physical punishment but through systematic linguistic practices that silence vulnerable students. Drawing on analysis of the Temanggung school-burning case in Indonesia, where a 13-year-old bullying victim set fire to his school after months of institutional neglect, this perspective identifies three mechanisms of institutional silencing: dismissive minimization through psychiatric discourse, trauma invalidation through temporal displacement, and the criminalization of resistance through security discourse. Against the backdrop of 13,210 social media activities generated by this case, the evidence suggests that digital communities in collectivist societies develop counter-hegemonic resistance patterns that are fundamentally different from those observed in individualistic contexts, challenging dominant Western assumptions about digital polarization. This perspective introduces the Collective Resonance Communication Model (CRCM) as a new theoretical tool for understanding how cultural values shape digital discourse. The analysis concludes with a call for discourse justice as a precondition for educational justice, and practical implications for platform governance, educator training, and policy reform.

PMID:42293708 | PMC:PMC13259651 | DOI:10.3389/fsoc.2026.1814224

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