Media Framing: A rhetorical technique of mass media language in Republika, Kompas, and Jawa Pos newspapers

摘要

A national test of civil servant candidates are followed by millions of people in Indonesia, as the test is prestigious to select test takers who will be officially accepted in Ministry of State for Administrative Reform and Bureaucracy, Indonesia Government. Newspapers texts frame our mental structures that shape the way we see the national test of civil servant candidates reported in 2013. The test information can further clearly be comprehended in finding the actor position of civil servant candidates in the discourse of Republika, Kompas, and Jawa Pos newspapers. This research is to obtain understanding clearly on the position of actors of civil servant candidates in newspaper discourses. Based on the background of the research and its objectives, the problem is formulated into the following question: How were civil servant candidates positioned in the national test of civil servant candidates by newspaper texts: Republika, Kompas, Jawa Pos at 4 November 2013? The research used qualitative content analysis, which was conducted in the interpretative method of text symbolic messages, particularly on newspaper texts. The researcher focuses his analysis on newspaper text interpretation to uncover latent messages from virtual reality to critique and transformation as well as social structures, in which contextual and social relations found varied in the time of the research. The results of the research show that Republika and Kompas used similar discourse strategies reflected in exclusion and inclusion subcategories, even though their framing clauses were varied. Meanwhile, Jawa Pos published the news report found more representative of civil servant candidates’ behaviour than the two newspaper reports. Interestingly, Republika and Kompas persuaded readers by an argumentative-descriptive text type, while Jawa Pos used a descriptive-narrative one. All three newspaper texts uniquely presented factual information of the national test identification and described its characteristics.