The digital public sphere in Nahdlatul Ulama's leadership crisis: netizen counter-discourse and social media discourse

Objective This study examines how YouTube commenters construct vernacular counter-discourse in response to a long-form political podcast discussing the leadership crisis within Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), Indonesia's largest civil society religious organization. The research investigates the interpretive practices through which ordinary viewers negotiate organizational legitimacy, sacred authority, procedural integrity, and resource politics within the affordances of YouTube's comment section. Previous studies have examined digital religion, online religious authority, and social media engagement in Indonesia. However, limited attention has been paid to how ordinary audiences construct counter-discourse during internal organizational crises within major religious institutions. Methods Employing Ethnographic Content Analysis (ECA), the study analyzes 739 comment entries—608 top-level comments and 131 replies—posted between 19 December 2025 and 26 January 2026 on a YouTube conversation featuring Mahfud MD and Nadirsyah Hosen. The analytical procedure followed Altheide and Schneider's stage protocol, incorporating iterative theoretical sampling, constant comparative analysis, and reflexive field notes to capture both manifest categories and latent discursive dimensions. Results The analysis reveals that commenters construct a Sacred–Procedural–Resource (SPR) grammar, systematically interweaving references to sacred authority, organizational procedure, and resource politics. Positive feedback functions not as passive approval but as mobilizing praise that carries programmatic reform demands. Commenters articulate specific, sequenced conditions for credible reconciliation, including audits, proper ordering of islah and muktamar, transparency, political disentanglement from state patronage, and identity maintenance that embeds critique within ongoing affective commitment. Conclusion The findings demonstrate that YouTube comment sections function as vernacular deliberative forums where lay audiences co-produce organizational accountability discourse rather than merely react to elite speech. The SPR grammar and intertextual verification loops theorize how religious authority negotiation shifts from unquestioned charisma to publicly justified procedural compliance subject to audit and evidentiary demonstration. This re-proceduralization of religious authority carries implications for religious organizations, podcast producers, and platform designers navigating the digital public sphere in Global South contexts, while opening avenues for comparative research across platforms, religious traditions, and crisis types. This study contributes theoretically by proposing the Sacred–Procedural–Resource (SPR) grammar and Intertextual Verification Loops (IVLs) as frameworks for understanding how digital publics negotiate religious legitimacy and organizational accountability.