CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
This chapter introduces background of the study, research question, aims of the study, scope of the study, significance of the study, clarification of terms, and organization of the paper.
1.1Background of the Study
Mass media is simply understood as a tool to deliver information to the mass of the people. It can be in the forms of newspaper, radio, or television. From all categories of mass media there is one called news media. According to McQuail (2005, cited in Jakubowicz, 2009), news media is one of technologies that provide information to the public and has very significant roles in society such as, providing information and forum of public debate and influencing public opinion. People tend to believe the information brought by the media because it uses persuasive language that is potential to control readers or viewers’s mind (van Dijk, n.d.).
In accordance to the explanation above, the use of media also very powerful during campaign, for example, nowadays Indonesian people are bewitched by the appearance of Joko Widodo who is represented as a very humble, low profile figure, so ideal to be the next president of Indonesia. Many news media represent Joko Widodo like that because, one of the reasons, his anti-mainstream action ‘blusukan’; observing directly the poor people, discussing the problems with them and finding the solution together. They broadcast it very often because they see it as interesting news that will attract public attention. The good image of Joko Widodo in society will not be achieved without considering the role of the media, thus, it can be seen how powerful media in portraying Joko Widodo’s self-image.
McQuail’s (1979, p.13) believes that “the more channels carrying the same campaign messages, the greater the probability of acceptance.” People have a tendency to believe what they watch or what they read in printed or electronic media because they often see it. Unfortunately, some people take for granted the information brought by news media and prefer using only their emotion in grasping the information, for instance, news about Joko Widodo. In addition, Sari (2013) sees the news of Joko Widodo as a strategy to create his personal branding so that people will believe whatever he does is positive since not all politicians dispose to do what Joko Widodo did.
Thus, van Leeuwen’s (2008) concept of representation of social actor can
be utilized in order to think critically of what is reported in the news media and to see how Joko Widodo is represented by seeing the category of exclusion and inclusion. To support the analysis of the representation, Halliday’s (2004) transitivity is used as the main tool to investigate the linguistic form of the
representation and is supported by Eggins’s (2004) transitivity; only the concept
of circumstance of time (temporal) and place (spatial).
investigation are press conference (Batia, 2006), speeches (Post, 2009; Wang, 2010), and interviews (Shayegh & Nabifar, 2012). The study conducted by Post (2009) concerned about the analysis of the utilization of textual persona in Barack Obama and Mc Cain’s presidential campaign speeches. It uses van Leeuwen’s framework of the representation of social actors which are aimed to shape the public perception of Barack Obama and Mc Cain and hide their identity through the textual persona. In addition, Wang (2010) focused the analysis on ideology and power in Obama’s presidential speeches and showed that Obama used his speech as a political tool to get public attentions. Furthermore, Shayegh and Nabifar (2012) investigated the domination of Barack Obama in his interviews by applying Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar and Fairclough’s perspective
of critical discourse analysis. The study revealed that Obama used “I” and “we”
very often to manipulate the material processes in order to impress American people regarding his self image in the presidential election of America .
Different from the previous studies above that only investigate the representation and the ideology of the social actor, this study investigates the representation of Joko Widodo and the ideology of the selected online news
media, detik.com and viva.co.id that underlie the representation of Joko Widodo’s
candidacy in the presidential election of Indonesia. To analyze the online news
articles, this study uses van Leeuwen’s (2008) theory on representation of social
actors as the framework of the study and Halliday’s (2004) and Eggins’s (2004)
transitivity as the basic tool to support the analysis.
1.2Research Question
1. How is Joko Widodo represented in the selected texts?
2. What does the representation signify?
1.3Aims of the Study
1. To investigate the representation of Joko Widodo in the selected texts.
2. To reveal the signifier of the representation of Joko Widodo
1.4Significance of the Study
Theoretically, the study of critical discourse analysis is beneficial to uncover representation and ideology contained in the online news texts. Besides, this study is expected to enrich the study of critical discourse analysis.
Practically, this study can be useful for people to reveal how big the impact of media (in this case, online news media) in representing a figure which is indirectly can change people’s ideology in seeing everything. Besides, this study also helps people to think more critically about the discourse around them.
1.5Clarification of Terms
a. Representation
Representation is “an activity in which language is used to say something meaningful about the world to other people.” (Halliday, 1985)
b. Discourse
“Discourse is the social process while text is only the output of that process.” (Fairclough, 1989, p.22)
language functions in constituting and transmitting knowledge.” (Wodak & Meyer, 2009)
d. Ideologies are “representations of aspects of the world which contribute to establishing and maintaining relations of power, domination, and exploitation.” (Fairclough, 2006, cited in Wodak & Meyer, 2009)
e. Texts refer to “parts of discourse which make speech acts durable over time and thus bridge two dilated speech situations.” (Wodak & Meyer, 2009)
f. News Media is “the organised technologies and organisations or institutions
that make mass communication possible.” (Jakubowijz, 2009, p.3)
1.6Organization of the Paper
CHAPTER V
CONCLUSION, IMPLICATION AND RECOMMENDATION
This chapter presents three main topics containing the conclusion of the finding and discussion, the implication of the result of the analysis and the recommendation for further studies regarding critical discourse analysis.
5.1 Conclusion
The present study examines the representation of Joko Widodo in selected online news media, Detik.com and Viva.co.id. It aims to reveal the ways Joko Widodo is represented in the media and to uncover the ideologies underlying the representation of Joko Widodo.
Based on the analysis of the representation of Joko Widodo using van
Leeuwen’s representation of social actor analysis and supported by Halliday’s
(2004) and Eggins’s (2004) transitivity, the study finds out that both Detik.com and Viva.co.id represent Joko Widodo differently in relation to his presidential election campaign. Detik.com represents Joko Widodo as the one who plays an active role in an activity, as an actor in the analysis of transitivity. It can be seen from the result of the analysis that categorizes Joko Widodo more as activation-participation-personalization which is mostly related with his anti-mainstream action, blusukan. In contrast, Viva.co.id represents Joko Widodo more passively as the one who is being discussed and judged, as the object of exchange. It can be identified through the result of the analysis that categorizes Joko Widodo more as passivation-participation-personalization which is mostly related with negative semantic loads attached to him such as, being unskilled in doing political communication and doing too much imagery.
in representing Joko Widodo. Viva.co.id, which is owned by Bakrie Group, appears to construct negative image of Joko Widodo because its elite, Abu Rizal Bakrie, stands for Prabowo Subianto, the rival of Joko Widodo in the presidential election. In the opposite, Detik.com tends to construct positive image of Joko Widodo because its Editorial Chief, Budiono Darsono, has close relationship with Megawati Soekarno Putri, the leader of PDIP who nominates Joko Widodo as one of the presidential candidates. In addition, related to the one-sidedness or partiality of Detik.com and Viva.co.id, they also used it as their strategies to gain as much profit as they can, which is the basic principle of capitalism (see Gidden, 1985, in Kamaruddin and Deddy, 2009, p.4).
It appears that there are two strategies that are used by the media to get as much profit as they can, i.e reporting news that tends to be interesting and providing a different news style which tends to be written in one perspective. Therefore, the owner of the media can control what to report and not to report. They are the ones who get advantages from it because the more people view the online news website, the more profit the media get from the companies that advertise their commercial in the websites.
At last, based on the findings above, it can be concluded that in relation to politics, media are used not only to provide information to the public, but also to reach particular political interests of the elites of the media itself. It makes media not only a source of information, but also a political actor (Page, 1996). In addition, by reporting the hottest issue of political event, media, especially online media hope that their articles are popular and their websites become most-read websites that will attract companies to insert their commercials, which can bring much profit and advantages for them. However, this is not the case for the readers. They have to be aware of the media and should not believe easily what comes from it, especially a crucial issue like presidential election. Therefore,
CDA’s approach in the analysis of media discourse is beneficial to uncover the
van Leeuwen’s representation of social actor is seen as a significant concept to look at the representation of social actor through the lexico-grammatical choices that cause different effects in society.
5.2 Implication
In accordance with the role and the function of the media in relation to the political and economic interests, people should not take anything for granted, especially in determining the crucial decision for their future. Choosing the figure who will become the next president is a crucial issue that has to be considered by the citizen of particular countries. A president, as the number one person in a country, will determine whether leading the citizen to poverty and misery or glory and superiority. Therefore, the decision to vote for the upcoming president has to be thought deeply and comprehensively. It cannot be decided by, in this case, depending only to the news about the presidential candidates that are often broadcast or reported through the media.
5.3 Recommendation
In order to expand the scope of the study of critical discourse analysis, there are four recommendations for the upcoming related studies. First, the present study uses ten news articles as the object of the study. Upcoming studies may examine different amount of data in order to attain different results.
Second, the present study uses news articles which were reported from April 1st to June 11th 2014. The forthcoming studies are suggested to use more recently data that can lead to different representation of social actor.
Furthermore, the forthcoming studies are also suggested to not only analyze the representation of one social actor like what is investigated in the present study, but also to compare the representation of two social actors, for instance, comparing two candidates of a presidential election.
