Framing Conflict and Environmental Justice in Online Media Coverage of the Ulumbu-Poco Leok and Mataloko Geothermal Projects in East Nusa Tenggara

Abstrak

Geothermal development in Flores is promoted as part of the energy transition, yet at the local level it has generated conflicts over land, water, livelihoods, participation, and recognition of Indigenous communities. This study examines how local online media in East Nusa Tenggara frame conflict and environmental justice in reporting on the Ulumbu-Poco Leok and Mataloko geothermal projects. It employs a qualitative descriptive-analytical approach with a comparative case-study design. The corpus comprises 24 event-based news articles published by seven media outlets between 1 January 2025 and 31 July 2026. The articles were analyzed using Entman’s four framing functions, Schlosberg’s three dimensions of environmental justice, and additional attention to source access and content origin. The findings identify two dominant framing packages. Fourteen articles (58.3%) foreground a rights-ecology frame, while seven articles (29.2%) prioritize a technocratic-development frame. The remaining three emphasize political mediation, project-related economic conflict, and episodic dramatization. Ulumbu-Poco Leok is primarily framed as a conflict over legitimacy, land rights, and consent procedures, whereas Mataloko is framed through lived impacts, technical risk, water, agriculture, and health. The study concludes that geothermal conflict is not simply a pro-con debate over renewable energy, but a contest over definitions of progress, the distribution of benefits and risks, the quality of participation, and recognition of local identities and knowledge.

Keywords: Media framing; Geothermal energy;  Conflict;  Environmental justice; East Nusa Tenggara