CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 Theoretical Foundations
2.1.4 Media Framing in Public Diplomacy
2.1.4.2 News Frames Analysis
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2.1.4.2. News Frames Analysis
News Frames are “conceptual tools which media and individuals rely on to convey, interpret, and evaluate information”
(Neuman et al., 1992, p. 60). Goffman (1974, p. 21) defined a frame as “the principles of organization which governs events – at least social ones – and our subjective involvement in them”.
Gamson and Modigliani (1989, p. 3) defined a frame as a
“central organizing idea for making sense of relevant events, suggesting what is at issue”. Similarly, in a simpler way.
Campbell (2009) stated that “Frames are efficient ways to sort information and create stories”, frames create ‘reality’.
Specifically, in this study, the coding instrument for the news frames derived from the combination of several theoretical frameworks mainly from Semetko & Valkenburg (2000) and An
& Gower (2017) that discussed news frames content analysis.
Based on both studies, there are five news frames identified:
conflict frame, human-interest frame, economic consequences frame, morality frame, and attribution of responsibility frame, which are as follows:
1. Conflict Frame: This frame emphasizes the conflict between individuals, groups, or institutions.
2. Human Interest Frame: This frame refers to an effort to personalize the news, dramatize or “emotionalize” the news, to capture and retain audience interest.
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3. Economic Consequences Frame: This frame emphasizes the economic impact of the issue on individuals, groups, or institutions.
4. Morality Frame: This frame puts the issue in the context of morals, social prescriptions, or religious tenets.
5. Attribution of Responsibility Frame: This frame presents an issue in such a way as to attribute responsibility for its cause or solution to either the institutions or individuals or groups.
These five categories of news frames will be defined into operational definitions and later used to analyze the news frames used in the news articles by both antaranews.com and detik.com to answer the second research question (RQ2), which is “To what extent the news frames of Indonesian government media was correlated to the news frames of friendly private media in the case of Muslim Uighurs Xinjiang?”. As news frames is an important element in how the media frames the news coverage in public diplomacy process, this study will help to understand the frames used by both antaranews.com as the government media and detik.com as the friendly private media in framing their news coverage regarding Muslim Uighurs Xinjiang case to shape the public opinion. Table 2 below shows the coding instrument for the news frames analysis in this study.
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Table 2. News Frames
No. I. News Frames
1. Code: Conflict Frame - This frame emphasizes the conflict between individuals, groups, or institutions as a means of capturing audience interest.
Sub Code Operational
Definition
Source
1a. Involved parties There are two or more
individuals, groups, or institutions involved individuals, groups, or institutions in the story. 2. Code: Human Interest Frame - This frame refers to an effort to personalize the
news, dramatize or “emotionalize” the news, to capture and retain audience interest.
Sub Code Operational
Definition
Source
2a. Private information The story goes into private lives of the actors.
Semetko &
Valkenburg, 2000
2b. Adjective The story uses
adjectives or personal vignettes to generate feelings of outrage, empathy caring,
2c. Visual content The story contains
visual information that generates feelings of outrage, empathy caring, sympathy, or compassion.
Semetko &
Valkenburg, 2000
3. Code: Economic Consequences Frame - This frame emphasizes the economic
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Sub Code Operational
Definition
Source
3a. Financial issue The story mentions
financial gains or losses now or in the
3b. Consequences There are economic
consequences of pursuing or not pursuing an action.
Semetko &
Valkenburg, 2000
4. Code: Morality Frame - This frame puts the issue in the context of morals, social prescriptions, or religious tenets.
Sub Code Operational
Definition
Source
4a. Morality references The story refers to morality, social prescriptions, or religious tenets.
Semetko &
4b. Specific behavior The story offers
specific social
5. Code: Attribution of Responsibility Frame - This frame presents an issue in such a way as to attribute responsibility for its cause or solution to either the institutions or individuals or groups.
Sub Code Operational
Definition
Source
5a. Responsibility The story suggests
that individuals, groups or institutions are responsible for the issue.
5b. Solution The story suggests a Semetko &
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5c. Urgent action The story suggests the
issue requires urgent action.
Semetko &
Valkenburg, 2000
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CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY
To answer the research questions, this study employs a quantitative content analysis, with a mixture of both deductive and inductive approaches. Berelson (1952, p. 18) defined content analysis as “a research technique for the objective, systematic and quantitative description of the manifest content of communication”. In line with that definition, Kolbe and Burnett (1991, p. 243) defined content analysis as “an observational research method that is used to systematically evaluate the symbolic content of all forms of recorded communication. These communications can also be analyzed at many levels (image, word, roles, etc.), thereby creating a realm of research opportunities”.
Similarly, Babbie (2016, p. 323) defined content analysis as “the study of recorded human communication, such as books, websites, paintings, and laws”.
Particularly, this study will examine the news articles from antaranews.com, covering about Muslim Uighurs Xinjiang case, by using an objective, systematic and quantitative content analysis method. As to examine the practice of domestic public diplomacy by the Indonesian government through the media used, this method emerges to be the most relevant one to serve a comprehensive result through a systematic observational research.
As about deductive content analysis, Elo and Kyngäs (2008, p. 107) explained that it “is useful if the general aims were to test a previous theory in a different situation or to compare categories at different time periods”. While inductive content analysis
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will create a set of guides to do the assessment (i.e. coding instrument) from past studies before the start of the assessment (i.e. coding) and then adds to them through reading the overall data. The details and process regarding the data collection, sampling, data analysis, and intercoder reliability will be explained further in this chapter.
3.1. Data Collection
The data of this study will be collected from the selected news media, which are antaranews.com and detik.com.
1. Antaranews.com
Figure 3. Antaranews.com Logo
Antaranews was founded in 1937 by Adam Malik, Soemanang, A.M. Sipahoetar, and Pandoe Kartawigoena (founding fathers). Later in 1962, Antara officially became a national news agency under the president of the Republic of Indonesia.
Antaranews.com then launched in January 1996 with the purpose to serve the public’s right to receive accurate, complete, and helpful information immediately. This portal also served in two languages (bilingual), Indonesian and English, so that the world community could also learn the whole as well as credible information about Indonesia today.
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Indeed, antaranews.com delivers real-time information on various events from Indonesia and around the world, under Perum LKBN Antara (The Indonesian News Agency), which is owned by the Indonesian Government, supplying news reports to the many domestic media organization. The total visits of antaranews.com for the last six months is 5.97 million with the top five biggest audience from Indonesia, United States, Singapore, Malaysia, and Australia.
Recently, in 2019, Antara received Adam Malik Award 2019 from the Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the category of the best online media, especially in providing accurate and objective information about Indonesia’s diplomacy (Pramudyani, 2019).
Concerning Muslim Uighurs Xinjiang case, antaranews.com is the main tool used by the Indonesian government to communicate the Muslim Uighurs Xinjiang case with the public, as what the researcher has mentioned earlier. As the purpose of this study is to examine the practice of domestic public diplomacy by the Indonesian government through the media used, and with all this information above, antaranews.com serves as a good fit for this study to represent the government media in analyzing the practice of Indonesia’s domestic public diplomacy in the case study of Muslim Uighurs Xinjiang.
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2. Detik.com
Figure 4. Detik.com Logo
Detik.com was originally founded in 1998 by Budi Darsono, Yayan Sopyan, Abdul Rahman, and Didi Nugrahadi and now owned by Trans Corp. under CT Corp. which owned by Chairul Tanjung.
The word “detik” itself means “second” (in time) as the founders began with the idea to be the first to publish the latest or breaking news. Detik.com is now known as one of the biggest digital media in Indonesia and already expanded itself into a media group called Detik Network, which consists of CNN Indonesia, CNBC Indonesia, Haibunda, Female Daily, Beautynesia, and Insertlive.
The total visits of detik.com for the last six months is as huge as 181.49 million with the top five biggest audience from Indonesia, United States, Singapore, Malaysia, and Australia. In 2018, Detik.com also received Adam Malik Award from the Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs as the appreciation for its legitimate contribution in Indonesia’s diplomacy and foreign policy by providing accurate and objective information for the public (Fatmawati, 2018).
Concerning Muslim Uighurs Xinjiang case, detik.com pays
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long time ago and still keep on doing it even until now. Besides, and looking at their current political stance through the media ownership, detik.com is considered as close to the government. Chairul Tanjung, the owner of CT Corp., which detik.com is now belonged to, mentioned as one of the media conglomerates ‘behind’ Indonesian President, President Joko Widodo, that now Chairul Tanjung’s daughter is also one of the presidential special staff (Sukirno, 2019;
Daud, 2019). Before the Indonesian Presidential election in 2019, he also appeared as one of the candidates of the head of President Joko Widodo’s campaign team (Supriatin, 2018). Accordingly, it is mentioned that President Joko Widodo can use detik.com, which is the number 1 media in Indonesia as a strong media coalition (R17, 2017). Considering the fact that it is one of the biggest and most accessed news media in Indonesia with huge number of readerships and its political stance, it is safe to say that detik.com serves as a good fit for this study to learn more about Indonesian domestic public diplomacy, especially in this Muslim Uighurs Xinjiang case.
3.2. Sampling
As the sampling method, this study employs the non-probability sampling, namely purposive sampling to gather the data. It is a sampling method, “which the researcher uses pre-determined criteria as the basis for selecting the actual sample for investigation or examination. In this method, the subjects are selected from the
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specified certain criteria regarding the media content as well as the time range to make sure the quality and clarity of the sample.
The news articles selected from both media are all of the news articles with the topic Muslim Uighurs Xinjiang published from November 2018 until June 2019 as the data shows that the topic about Muslim Uighurs Xinjiang starts from November 2018, then significantly increasing during that time and slowly decreasing afterward, but still keep going until June 2019 (as seen in Figure 5 below). Especially in November 2018, the international critiques towards Indonesia that considered as remain silent regarding Muslim Uighurs Xinjiang case started to appear, thus it is expected as the time when the Indonesian government started to implement the domestic public diplomacy. News articles then will be collected using the keyword “Uighur” by excluding the irrelevant results, for example, articles with unrelated topic, articles with only photo or video, or articles that are written by or taken from other media to understand more the stance of both antaranews.com and detik.com itself.
After going through that process, there are 68 news articles from antaranews.com and 52 news articles detik.com that will be examined for this study.
The complete collection of the selected news articles can be seen further in Appendix A (page 62).
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Figure 5. Google trends analytics result on Muslim Uighurs Xinjiang topic in Indonesia
3.3. Data Analysis
After collecting and assessing the data through the coding process, the researcher will analyze it based on the theoretical foundations (Chapter 2), which are mainly public diplomacy, domestic public diplomacy, digital public diplomacy, and media framing in public diplomacy. Prasad (2008) suggests that the unit of analysis in content analysis study vary with the nature of data and the purpose of the research, for example, a sentence, or a paragraph, a news item or an article containing a symbol or a theme, or a group of facts can be a unit. Specifically, the unit of analysis of this study will be the sentences in the news articles that later will be coded based on the coding instrument (Table 1 & Table 2). This is related to the fact that in one news article (or even a paragraph), there is possibly more than one main idea within, so using sentence as a unit of analysis will help the researcher to grab comprehensive insights from each news article.
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3.3.1. Coding Instrument
To assess the news articles, this study will use a set of guides, which is mentioned before as the coding instrument. Both the news tone analysis and news frames analysis have their coding instruments, which are Table 1 (page 23) and Table 2 (page 26). This section will discuss how to assess the data based on those coding instruments in detail.
Firstly, to examine the news tone, this study will use sentence as a unit of analysis of this study. As some sentences may contain more than one idea, the researcher will code the tone of a sentence and one sentence can only be in one sub-code, either pro, support, secure, contra, protest, or insecure. Then, to calculate the news tone of one article, this study will use the formula from the past study by Matthew Esbaugh-Soha (2010) titled “The Tone of Local Presidential News Coverage”, which said, “in the quantitative analyses, tone equals positive sentences minus negative sentences divided by total sentences, multiplied by 100 for cleaner presentation” (Esbaugh-Soha, 2010, p. 128). So, the researcher will use this formula to calculate the news tone of all news articles.
After calculating the news tone of all news articles, to see the shifting of the tone from November 2018 until June 2019, the researcher will see the shifting of the news tone from the first until the last article in timely order and put in a graph to make it easier to see. That way, the news tone from November 2018 until June 2019 can be seen clearer from Figure 5. The same process is applied to both antaranews.com and
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direction, this study will compare the news tone analysis graphs of both antaranews.com and detik.com.
Secondly, to examine the news frames, the coders will analyze whether an article use certain news frames and one article can be coded to more than one news frames. The goal is to contrast the news frames used by both antaranews.com and detik.com as the news frames used by the media have an important role in influencing public opinion. To do the coding, the researcher will have to answer there is (1) or there is no (0) for each of the news frames. There is (1) means there is that certain news frame used in the article and there is no (0) is there is no that certain news frame used in the article. In the end, the result will show which use frames used by both antaranews.com and detik.com in their coverage about Muslim Uighurs Xinjiang. Each of them could possibly emphasize different news frames in their news articles and this study aims to understand what news frames they used and how they used it in their news articles regarding the Muslim Uighurs Xinjiang case.
3.4. Intercoder Reliability
Intercoder reliability is an essential step of a content analysis research. It is
“near the heart of content analysis; if the coding is not reliable, the analysis cannot be trusted” (Singletary, 1993, p. 294). In line with this explanation, Lombard &
Snyder-Duch (2002) also stated that “Intercoder reliability, more specifically termed intercoder agreement, is a measure of the extent to which independent
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Accordingly, along with the researcher, one coder will code the news articles separately and later compare the results in terms of intercoder reliability. There are ways to measure intercoder reliability and this study will use Cohen Kappa’s reliability test and “it was reported as the most widely used index for reliability”
(Wang, 2011, p. 15). The Kappa can range from -1 to +1, where 1 represents perfect agreement between the coders. Cohen suggested the Kappa values 0.81-1.00 are considered as almost perfect agreement, while 0.61-0.80 is substantial, and 0.41-0.60 is moderate but inadequate (McHugh, 2012).
In this reliability test between two coders, 18 subcodes of this study have been tested with an average Kappa values of 0.84 as the result and is considered as almost perfect agreement. The complete result of the reliability test can be seen in Appendix B (page 79).
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CHAPTER 4 RESULTS
4.1. News Tone Analysis
To begin this section, this study first discusses the findings of the news tone analysis to answer the first research question (RQ1), which is “To what extent the news tone of Indonesian government media was correlated to the news tone of friendly private media in the case of Muslim Uighurs Xinjiang?”. As the main goal of public diplomacy is “to shape positive attitudes toward the country” (Ociepka, 2008, p. 1), the government media here is assumed to try to shape the news tone into the positive tone and the government-friendly media here is expected to be in the same direction with the government media as later it will help to shape the public opinion desired. To answer this question, this study first looks at the news tone of antaranews.com as the government’s media of public diplomacy, then see the news tone of detik.com as the selected private media and analyze whether they are correlated to each other. Figure 6 below shows the news tone analysis result of antaranews.com.
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Figure 6. News Tone Analysis – Antaranews.com (November 2018 – June 2019)
Figure 6 shows the fluctuating of antaranews.com’s news tone from time to time, starting from November 2018 until June 2019. Looking at the overall result, the news tone of antaranews.com in this Xinjiang Uighurs Muslim case is rather negative than positive with an average number of 12.46. The numbers of the tone itself range from -118.18 until 77.78 and it is safe to say that starting from the middle of the graph, the tone gradually becomes more positive than before, or at least slightly higher on the average than in the first half graph.
Looking back at the lowest news tone, it is happened right on December 21, 2018, when the protest, which demanded an end to China’s detention of Muslim Uighurs Xinjiang in Jakarta took place. There are numerous sentences with negative tendencies as the article mainly said about how Indonesia’s foreign policy of being
Looking back at the lowest news tone, it is happened right on December 21, 2018, when the protest, which demanded an end to China’s detention of Muslim Uighurs Xinjiang in Jakarta took place. There are numerous sentences with negative tendencies as the article mainly said about how Indonesia’s foreign policy of being