REPRESENTASI DISABILITAS DALAM BUKU CERITA ANAK DIGITAL: ANALISIS WACANA KRITIS MULTIMODAL PADA LAMAN BUDI
Abstract
This article examines the representation of disability in digital children’s storybooks published on the BUDI website (Buku Digital Gerakan Literasi Nasional), a digital literacy platform for children that includes inclusivity as one of its central themes. As a digital medium, the BUDI website combines verbal narratives, visual illustrations, and page layout to construct meaning, thereby enabling disability to be read as a multimodal practice rather than merely a narrative theme. This study aims to investigate how disability is constructed through the relationship between text and visuals in these digital children’s stories. The theoretical framework employed is multimodal critical discourse analysis, drawing on van Leeuwen’s concept of multimodality, particularly the aspects of social actor representation, visual relations, and compositional meaning. The research method involves close textual reading and qualitative descriptive, focusing on linguistic choices, narrative structure, illustrations, color schemes, and visual organization that contribute to the construction of meanings surrounding disability. The results and discussion indicate an ambivalence in the representation of disability. On the one hand, patterns of misrepresentation and overrepresentation are found, namely when the disability of people with disabilities is assured through certain moral messages or excessively highlighted as a symbol of inspiration, potentially reducing the complexity of the experiences of people with disabilities. On the other hand, there is also genuine representation, when children with disabilities are shown as active, equal subjects, and naturally involved in the storyline, with non-stigmatizing visual support. Thus, this article contributes to the field of children’s literature and disability studies by highlighting how digital children’s media participates in shaping discourses of inclusivity through multimodal practices.
Keywords: Budi; Digital Books; Discourse Analysis; Disability; Multimodali
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