Media representation of indonesia in the sydney morning herald from 2004 to 2009 1

Among approximately one-hundred texts on Indonesia published each year in SMH, this study selected only articles about Indonesia’s national, domestic, social and cultural issues, and exc

CHAPTER 1

Introduction and Theoretical Perspectives

1.1 Introduction to Thesis

This study deals with media representations constructed by one country’s

newspaper about another country In particular, it examines how Indonesia was

represented in one Australian broadsheet, The Sydney Morning Herald (SMH),

from 2004 to 2009 This chapter discusses the motivation, the research questions, the purpose and the theoretical perspectives of this study

1.1.1 Motivation for the Study

This study takes the perspective that what gets reported in the news should not be understood as the same as what actually happened Rather, it is the author’s

version of what happened The news about an event should be distinguished from the event itself (van Leeuwen, 2008), because it has undergone

recontextualization processes of being selected and made relevant and appropriate

to the news discourse (Fairclough, 2003; van Leeuwen, 2008) It has also been framed in such a way (D’Angelo and Kuypers, 2010, Johnson-Cartee, 2005) due

to the writers’ knowledge, experience, ideology, culture, and purpose of writing

In this process, some participants in the event may be foregrounded while some others backgrounded in the news, and their actions dramatized or generalized

Above all, reporters may also share their own judgments or opinions about the event, the participants and their actions

News representation, that is, the portrayal or construal of people and events in the news, is a complicated matter Representations that reporters make in the news can be explicit or implicit, and not all readers are able to interpret them accurately because they also have different background knowledge, experience, exposure levels, and purpose of reading Readers tend to accept and believe what is reported

in the news, because they realize they are limited by distance and access to the events Readers may not realize that news reports are only the reporters’

representations about the events; that’s why, different reporters produce different

representations of the same people and events Nevertheless, news has become pervasive in human’s life (Alterman, 2003), and the effects of news have

significantly influenced all segments of life From politics (e.g., Graber, 2011), economy and business (e.g., Cai, 2011), education (e.g Buckingham, 2000) and environmental education (e.g., Stevenson and Dillon, 2010) to the more mundane day-to-day interests of people such as the weather, fashion, transportation, food and health, most human activities are influenced by the latest news Journalists claim that they report the event as real as it is, are objective and balanced, and avoid biased reporting However, informed readers or media analysts have found evidences of explicit and implicit misrepresentations in the news, for example, those towards women (e.g., Stevens-Gupta, 2011; Merskin, 2011), minority groups (e.g., Harding, 2006; Merskin, 2011; Richardson, 2004a; Pietikainen, 2003; van Dijk, 2000), immigrants (e.g KhosraviNik, 2009), ethnic or religious

groups (e.g., Richardson, 2004b), the disabled (e.g., Darke, 2005), and the ageing (e.g., Bailey, 2010)

Most of these studies dealt with news representations of certain groups of people living in the same community with the reporters and the readers They were negatively represented in the news media and treated as an ‘out-group’ against another group assumed to be the mainstream society such as male, employed, healthy, active and of ethnic majority This condition is characterized as racism in the media (e.g., van Dijk, 2000; Richardson, 2004b) Such negative depiction in the news may generate racism in the society, because news can construct public opinion (Lippmann, 1922 [2007]) Racist representations of minority groups may influence the readers’ and society’s perceptions about those groups Not only that, soon the negative stereotypes in the news can result in racist behaviors towards those groups and unfair treatment and discrimination from the mainstream

government and lawmakers towards them For example, the negative

representations in some British newspapers and tabloids about Asian immigrants living in Britain caused racist behaviors of the local British people towards those immigrants (e.g., KhosraviNik, 2009)

This study, however, aims to analyze the media representation about a foreign country, namely, representations in an Australian newspaper about Indonesia Physically, Australia and Indonesia are separated by the Indian Ocean, which is each country’s border Socially, they are separated and develop in different

cultures Concerning the effects of the news, what is reported in Australia about

Indonesia will shape the perceptions of the Australian readers, including the

government officials and people, about Indonesia For example, following the footage in ABC news about the inhumane slaughtering of Australian cattle in Indonesia’s abattoirs in 2011 (http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2012/

s3441902.htm), the Australian government suspended the export of Australian

cattle to Indonesia for some time

In the cross-border contexts such as in the case of Australia and Indonesia where the border is an ocean, however, the Indonesians in Indonesia may not be directly affected by its negative representations in the Australian news Negative

stereotypes about Indonesia may be formed and may affect some Indonesians living in Australia and interacting with Australians, but the media effect will not

be as strong and direct as that in the same-community context Thus, some

concepts in media representation studies need to beadapted in order to more fully appreciate cross-border representations

In the process of representing another country or culture, reporters perceive that country or culture through their ‘cultural goggles’ (Nesbitt, 1971) This means they interpret the social practices they see in that country through their own cultural codes In case of Australia and Indonesia, what happens and commonly done in Indonesia are observed through the western standard, and this is greatly different from the Indonesian or particularly Javanese traditions which the

reporters see during their assignment in Indonesia In construing Indonesia in the news, the reporters put Indonesia as the object of representation which they share

to the Australian readers Both reporters and readers share the same cultural codes which they use to interpret and evaluate events in Indonesia The interpretation by

Australian readers will definitely different from that of Indonesian Indonesians who do not read Australian newspapers may not know that they have perhaps been ‘misrepresented’ (presented in a wrong or negative way) so they could not counter it Although Australian journalists may not do so on purpose, the pattern

is the same: negative stereotypes of Indonesians tend to be recycled among

Australians from generation to generation (Freedman, 2000)

This study is also motivated by personal experience As an Indonesian studying in Australia under the Australian Government’s scholarship, and then teaching Australian Studies upon returning to Indonesia, I have been reading Australian newspapers and have become more interested in reading their news on Indonesia

I was often struck by the negative images of Indonesians reported for the

consumption of Australian public On one hand, I cannot say that those

representations were not true because I saw similar events or read about them in the local press On the other hand, there is a danger of constantly presenting predominantly negative representations about Indonesia to non-Indonesian

readers Over time Australian readers may build biased stereotypes of Indonesia, because they may never visit Indonesia, get to know Indonesians personally or experience living in the country themselves They rely only on these mediated representations written by Australian correspondents for their ideas of Indonesia and Indonesians In terms of future bilateral relationships, such a situation may prove detrimental

As discussed earlier that news representation is a complicated matter, in foreign media representations the complication is more intense due to the different

cultural codes used to interpret a foreign culture Studies on foreign media

representation are even very rare After using search engines and accessing the websites of several universities and libraries, I found only two studies on foreign media representation One was conducted by Wasburn (2002), who analyzed how the United States of America was politically represented in Japanese, Indonesian, British, French, Canadian and Russian print and electronic media He concluded that the representations of the US in the media of other countries were very much influenced by the political and historical contexts of the country’s relationships with the US For example, in the Japanese media the US was perceived as a business competitor, in the Indonesian media as the world police (in a negative sense), in the Russian media as a former enemy, and in the British, French and Canadian media as a far-away friend Such representations were very general and referring to the country or government only My study, on the contrary, analyzes the foreign media representations of different kinds of people of another country:

from the presidents to the scavengers

The other study was Mahony (2006, 2010a, 2010b) which focused on the

construction of Indonesian Islam in Australian news in the context of ‘war on terrorism’ While my research topic is similar to hers, Mahony limited her

subjects to muslim Indonesians only In Australian news after the series of

bombings in Indonesia in 2002-2005, especially the Bali bombing in 2002 and the bombing of the Australian Embassy in Jakarta in 2004, unsurprisingly there was a very negative sentiment towards Islamists Since then Australia supported the United States of America’s programs in fighting terrorism Thus, framed and

perceived within a skewed context from the outset, the news representations of the Islamists were understandably negative

The present study, however, wishes to observe a relatively unbiased outsider’s perception and representation of Indonesia That is why the chosen news for this study are about Indonesia’s domestic issues which the Australians had no vested interest Moreover, the Indonesians analyzed in the news are from all walks of life, from presidents and government officials, to food vendors and other ordinary Indonesians, including the Islamists This study attempts to see the representations

of Indonesia which are constructed from a set of diverse issues, in order to avoid the bias of particular topics, such as the Islamists and the war on terrorism

The data were gathered from The Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) from 2004 to

2009 SMH is the mainstream broadsheet published and distributed mainly in Sydney and the New South Wales Among approximately one-hundred texts on Indonesia published each year in SMH, this study selected only articles about Indonesia’s national, domestic, social and cultural issues, and excluded news about Indonesia but relating to Australia and those affecting Australia-Indonesia relations Thus, articles on bilateral disputes, such as East Timor, Papua, asylum-seekers, Bali Nine (nine Australian drug mules arrested and imprisoned in Bali), Shapelle Corby (jailed for bringing marijuana into Indonesia), the prosecution and execution of the Bali bombers, or Merauke Five (five Australians without visas stranded in Papua) were not selected The decision was made because the

representations of Indonesia in such news articles may be characterized by what

van Dijk called ‘ideological square’ (van Dijk, 2000) Applied to news items in Australia, this means that the Australian newspaper, like any writer or speaker,

will emphasize the good of ‘self’ and the bad of ‘others’, and de-emphasize the bad of ‘self’ and the good of ‘others’

Concerning controversial political issues, many scholars in political science from both countries have discussed and debated these, for example, Silalahi (1991), Evans (1995), Aspinall and Fealy (e.g., 2010), Lindsey (e.g., 2000), Crouch (e.g., 2010), and Mietzner (e.g., 2006, 2009) Linguistic and media studies research on Australia and Indonesia relations are, on the contrary, very few, although

language, news and the media are integral materials in the studies of political, bilateral relations Thus, this study attempts to fill the linguistic and media gap in the collection of studies about Indonesia and Australia

This study decided to observe news representations of Indonesians in Australian press from social, cognitive and cultural perspectives In particular, the social perspective is based on Fuller (2010) and Schudson (2003), the cognitive and sociocognitive perspectives follow van Dijk and Kintsch (1983), and van Dijk (1988a, 1988b, 2008), and the cultural perspective follows Berkowitz (2011) and Zelizer (1997) These theoretical perspectives, which will be discussed in Section 1.2., show that news representation invites multi-interpretation from the readers and thus need a multi-perspectival approach to analyze Therefore, this study also attempts to propose a linguistic framework towards analyzing news

representations which take into consideration the Indonesian news actors and the

Australian reporters who produced the representations The framework, consisting

of three analyses of ‘news actors’, ‘news actions’ and ‘author evaluation’, will be presented in Chapter Three

The term ‘news actor’, adapted from van Leeuwen’s (2008) ‘social actor’,

specifies the social actors in the news articles ‘News action’, also adapted from van Leeuwen’s (2008) ‘social action’, deals with the actions of the news actors which get reported in the news The ‘author evaluation’ framework, following Martin and White’s (2005) appraisal system, analyzes the reporters’ comments or opinions about the news actors and their actions which they communicate to the readers Their opinions are categorized into a number of aspects of evaluation and whether the evaluation is expressed explicitly or implicitly In general, the

reporters’ opinions about news actors and their actions mainly frame the whole representations they produce in the news Because the first and the second

analyses deal with personal attributes and behaviors of the news actors, and the third analysis deals with the reporters’ opinions or comments about the actors, the proposed three-dimensional analytical framework complement each other in observing representations of news actors and their actions in the news

1.1.2 Research Questions

The main research question to be answered in this study is how Indonesia is

represented in the selected news articles published in The Sydney Morning Herald

(SMH) from 2004 to 2009 This question will be investigated by examining how

Indonesian news actors and their actions are verbally portrayed by the Australian reporters in the news articles and what the reporters ‘say’ about them

In particular, this study will answer the following questions:

1 How are Indonesian news actors represented in the Australian newspaper?

2 How are their actions represented in the newspaper?

3 In what aspects of evaluation are the news actors and their actions mainly represented in the newspaper?

By answering these questions, this study hopes to characterize the representations

of Indonesia and/or Indonesians in the Australian newspaper These news actors are categorized based on the levels of their political involvement; thus, the objects

of representation are the presidents and some presidential candidates, the

government officials, and the ordinary people of Indonesia

1.1.3 Purpose of the Study

This study aims at finding out how Indonesian news actors were portrayed in the Australian newspaper in 2004-2009 As studies in media representations about another country are rare, this study hopes to contribute towards understanding the dynamic and complex negotiations involved in representing a foreign country

in one’s news In the Australia-Indonesia context, studies on one country’s news media about the other country were also very few, and thus the findings of the

analysis would add to the mosaic of images and perceptions about each other It

is hoped that this would contribute towards improving mutual understanding between these neighbouring countries

This study also develops a framework for foreign media representation which consists of three domains: the news actors, the news actions and the author

evaluation Equipped with this framework, this study will observe the news

representations of Indonesians in terms of their representations as persons,

through their actions, and from the reporter’s opinions about them

The next section discusses the theoretical perspectives that are used to understand the news production and comprehension processes These perspectives are

relevant to critical discourse analysis, the research approach of this study These perspectives also support the application of the three-domain analytical

framework

1.2 The Theoretical Perspectives of the Study

This study decided to observe news processes from the social, cognitive and cultural perspectives because of three interrelated factors First, news circulates in

a social context involving writers, that is, reporters and/or editors, and readers or audience in the society Second, news writing and reading are cognitive activities

of the reporters and the readers who shape and are shaped by their personal, social and cultural environments And third, the effect or result of news articles reflects, shapes and is shaped by the social and cultural contexts where news circulates

This study argues that studies on news, including news representation, need to take these three factors into account in order to clearly understand the roles and influences of news in society

As stated, news processes are those involved in the production and comprehension

of news Prior to being able to produce a representation of an event in the form of news articles, reporters as members of a society receive all forms of inputs from other members of that society in three ways These include the informal

education from parents and relatives, the formal education at school, university and probably a formal journalism training, and the non-formal learning such as watching or reading news, discussions with friends, and watching films and documentaries From all of these sources of information reporters build their understanding of the world around them Following the social-cognitive view, the production of news begins with an event happening in a community or society (e.g., Berkowitz, 1997), then the event gets cognitively internalized by the

reporters (e.g., van Dijk and Kintsch, 1983) and the result is offered back to the community in the form of news Thus, the whole process of producing and

comprehending news in the society runs in a spiralling mode, meaning that the news article produced and comprehended will become the input of other people

and news writers in further cycles

The theoretical foundation of this perspective is adopted from the cognitive

psychological concepts of discourse comprehension proposed by van Dijk and Kintsch (1983), Kintsch (1998), van Dijk (e.g., 1988a, 1988b, 1998a, 1998b, 2008); the sociological concepts of news by Schudson (2003), and Berger and

Luckmann (1966[2011]); the classic sociological views of news by Lippmann (1922 [2007]), Fishman (1980) and Gans (1979); and journalism studies by

Zelizer (1997, 2009), Shoemaker et al (2009), and Tumber (1999)

The first perspective of news processes is the social perspective Following

Zelizer (1997), news is basically a form of communication between the reporters

or newspaper and the readers or members of a society Based on Jakobson’s communication model (Lacey, 1998), the reporter is the sender of the message, and the readers or society is the receiver of the message Understanding this mode

of relation will improve the readers’ media literacy (Potter, 2011) because what is written in the news is understood as not the exact ‘reality’, but as the reporter’s perception or version of reality which he/she offers or communicates to the

readers It is evident when readers compare several news accounts of the same event in different newspapers They will find different versions in terms of

naming, categorizing, identifying causality and other aspects of the event, as the result of recontextualization process The exception is when newspapers publish news accounts bought from international news agencies such as the Reuters, AP, UPI, and AFP The published articles in different newspapers in different

countries will relatively follow the agencies’ representation

Reporters also function is a social context wheretheyexperience social forces and social constraints in relation to their profession According to Molotch and Lester (1999: 38), the social processes of news production and comprehension involve a number of participants They are the ‘news promoters’ – the goverment officials, and business and social organizations; the ‘news assemblers’ – the

reporters; and the ‘news consumers’ – the readers or audience, who may include government officials and organizations too Each group has its own goals in dealing with news, and reporters as the news assemblers do not just gather news (Johnson-Cartee, 2005) While catering to the needs of the other groups, they also

promote their own idealism and social agenda

A news article is thus produced not like a blog entry which is very personal in content and writing style, but constrained by ethics and journalism standards The reporters’ personal knowledge, ideologies and intentions play an important role in the writing process, and in producing their news articles they follow the standard rules and conventions of their news organization (Allan, 2004) At the same time, they also take the social and cultural conventions of the readers into consideration

In doing so, reporters will frame their news reports in such a way that is

‘attractive’ and acceptable to the news organization, the news promotors and the news consumers

Reporters and editors have been familiar with the concepts of news values or newsworthiness such as the well-quoted news values proposed by Galtung and Ruge (1965), who said that only events with more than one news value or a

distinctive value which attract readers and advertizers will get published

Furthermore, following Berger and Luckmann (1966[2011]), news is a ‘social construction of reality’ and it is incorrect for readers to assume that news reflects the ‘reality out there’ as it is (Caldas-Coulthard, 2003) Berkowitz (1997),

discussing the social meanings of news, confirms that the role of reporters in shaping the news is based on the social factors around them such as the agreed

work procedure (in relation to their news organization), attaching certain values to the news events in the news framing process, and inevitably coloring their news with ‘their socially learned beliefs about society and how the world works.’

(1997: xii) Thus, the ‘reality’ reported in the news should be understood and accepted as a ‘symbolic reality’, and the ‘world out there’ as a ‘symbolic

universe’ (Wasburn, 2002: 58)

Summarizing several concepts of news processes from Schudson (2003),

Berkowitz (1997), Zelizer (1997) and van Dijk (1988a, 1988b), I present

diagrammatically the news processes that take place in the social context and at the cognitive level Figure 1.1 shows how news circulates from the society to the reporter (Process 1), the information is then cognitively internalized in the

reporter’s mind (Processes 2 – 4) and further, representations are produced by the reporter and shared to the society (Process 5).The resulting news representations will become information input for other persons (Process 6) and new cycles of these news processes will take place again

The cognitive model in Figure 1.1 is based on discourse comprehension and production processes (van Dijk and Kintsch, 1983; Kintsch, 1998; van Dijk, 1988a, 1988b, 1998), and mental models (Johnson-Laird, 1983, 2006; Garnham, 1999a, 1999b; Sanford and Moxey, 1999) as explained in cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence

Figure 1.1 Comprehension–Representation Processes of News

As seen in Figure 1.1, reporters should be able to perceive and comprehend (Process 2) the external inputs (Process 1) around them through their senses Thus, the social context is seen to significantly influence the reporters in the beginning of this cognitive process Some of these inputs are ignored and passed

by, but certain inputs will be identified, noted and remembered The latter will form the reporters’ mental representation (Process 3) in their memory or

knowledge bank Processes 2 and 3 are two-way processes as some scholars are convinced that human beings can perceive the inputs from the world around them

- materials

INTERFACE:

MENTAL REPRESENTATION

- interpretation

- inference

- knowlege (frame, script)

- experience

COGNITIVE SYSTEMS

COMPREHENSION – REPRESENTATION PROCESS

new:

knowledge norms, values stereotypes commonsense ideologies beliefs identities relationships expectations sensations

current:

knowledge experiences ideologies beliefs identities

Cognitive process

❹

because they already have some concepts in their mind about that input (van Dijk and Kintsch, 1983)

Mental representation (van Dijk and Kintsch, 1983; Kintsch,1998; van Dijk, 1981) has been discussed and debated very intensively in cognitive psychology, artificial intelligence and psychology Scholars have used several terms with more

or less similar concepts in theories ranging from frame theory (Minsky, 1988), script theory (Schank and Abelson, 1977), scenario (Sanford and Garrod, 1981), schema theory and schemata (Rumelhart, 1998; Bartlett, 1932), mental models (Johnson-Laird, e.g., 1983, 2006; Garnham, 1996, 1999a, 1999b) to text-world theory (Gavins, 2007) In essence, mental representation is perceived as the

backbone of the storage of knowledge or memory in human minds This is where human beings create their internal ‘reality’ or ‘their world’ (Webb, 2009) Each

‘reality’ will be maintained until they receive further external inputs on which they may decide to change, sustain, confirm or strengthen the current ‘reality’ that they have adhered to so far This concept is consistent with the process of

producing and interpreting representations later discussed in 2.1

Mental representation is not a fixed and rigid structure On the contrary, it is flexible and multilayered (van Dijk and Kinsch, 1983), partitioned (Dinsmore, 1991), and multileveled (Kintsch, 1998) Dinsmore (1991) in fact divides mental

representations based on spaces for certain categories such as belief spaces, hope and wish spaces, possibility spaces; fictional, dream and pretense spaces; spaces representing specific places, times and situations; and some others Kintsch (1998)

and van Dijk and Kintsch (1983) agree that there are different sections in mental

representations but describe these based on the cognitive and conceptual skills that these representations perform, because mental representations are seen as

“forming a hierarchy of abstractness and increasing independence from the

environment” (Kintsch, 1998: 16) In other words, the higher the level of mental representations is, the more abstract and complex it is from the material data

Specifically, Kintsch (1998) explains five levels in mental representations The

first or the lowest level consists of the direct procedural and perceptual

representations which capture different types of affordances, abilities, actions and

biological mechanisms It is dependent on the external environment and can be modified through learning and training The second level is composed of the

episodic representations which store memories about events and sequences of events The third level is made up of the non-verbal, imagery and action

representations which store images, emotions and attitudes This representation

level needs an established social community as a prerequisite for its representation

to function The two highest levels consist of the verbal or linguistic

representations and are independent from the environment One level is useful in processing narrative and oral representations, and the other is the highest and most complex level which deals with abstract representations, such as logical

thought, formal argument, deduction, quantification and formal measurement To comprehend news and understand the ‘world’, a person will need to effectively, flexibly and strategically utilize his/her mental representation at all levels

(Kintsch, 1998)

Over time, the mental representations will shape reporters into individuals with certain skills, knowledge, norms, values, beliefs, understanding of identities and relations, ideologies, stereotypes, commonsense, expectations, personalities and

so on When they produce comments, responses, opinions, or reports, they

activate their mental representation in processes of moving forward and backward

at these cognitive stages Finally, the news reports that they write are the material representation or reproduction (Process 4) of the whole cognitive process of comprehension and representation of that event (van Dijk and Kintsch, 1983) At this stage, reporters would combine their internal reality with the external inputs and reality from around them to produce a piece of representation which can be accepted and understood by news consumers in the society When news is

distributed to consumers (Process 5), the process takes place in the social context again, and the result representations become inputs for other individuals in the society Therefore, news comprehension and representation processes form a spiralling movement, and both happen in an individual’s mind, in the society and across generations

The social and cognitive, or ‘sociocognitive’ (van Dijk, 1988a, 1988b, 1998b, 2008), perspectives of news processes discussed above is relevant to the research approach, that is, critical discourse analysis (CDA), and the analytical framework

of this study, that is, the news actor, news action, and author evaluation

frameworks They are also consistent with the representation-making process discussed in Chapter Two First, these perspectives effectively accommodate some CDA tenets that become the foundation of this research One of them is the

three-dimensional analysis of Fairclough (1989, 1992, 1995b) which clearly puts discourse within its social context, and thus, the social structures, social relations and identities, and social practices involved in the production and consumption of Australian news about Indonesia need to be involved in the analysis News

discourse is a product of a society, and the social forces and social structures shape the society in which news articles circulate Another tenet of critical

discourse analysis for this study is the recontextualization process of social

practices Van Leeuwen (2008) stated that discourse is a recontextualization of social practices, while discourse itself is a social practice Thus, news discourse cannot be analyzed separately from the surrounding social practices The other tenet is from van Dijk (1988a, 1988b, 2008), who also consistently maintained that discourse and society are interrelated Van Dijk and Kintsch (1983)

specifically stated that, “Discourses such as stories do not occur in vacuo They

are produced and received, by speakers and listeners, in specific situations within

a wider sociocultural context” (1983: 6) These tenets of CDA will be further discussed in the next chapter

Second, the sociocognitive perspectives are relevant to the three-part analytical framework The first and the second analyses, that is, the news actor and the news action, are derived from van Leeuwen’s (2008) social actor and social action networks The third analysis, that is, the author evaluation, is partly adapted from Martin and White’s (2005) appraisal system Both van Leeuwen’s and Martin and White’s frameworks were inspired by Halliday‘s systemic functional linguistics (Halliday, 1994; Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004) According to Halliday,

language is a social semiotic system which serves communication functions called

‘metafunctions’ There are three metafunctions: (1) ideational or representational metafunction, which includes experiential and logical functions and functions to construe experience and thoughts, (2) interpersonal metafunction which functions

to indicate social relationships and express opinion and attitude, and (3) textual metafunction which functions to organize the experience and social relations into

a coherent and relevant text

Within the social cognitive perspectives, news is seen not only as a report of events, thus fulfilling the ideational/representational function, but also as the reporters’ opinions about the events which they share to the readers, and so carries out the interpersonal function Both functions will be served in the analytical framework of this study, because the news actor and the news action analyses realize the ideational/representational function, and the author evaluation analysis serves the interpersonal function The framework will be further detailed in

Chapter Three

The third perspective of news processes is the cultural perspective Three concepts

of this perspective are relevant to this study First, news is understood as a product

of a culture and thus it reflects that culture and over time it becomes the

documents of that culture (Berkowitz, 2011: xii) News archives with pictures (and now online news with photos and video recording taken from television news programs) become the cultural and historical artifacts of the events, activities, fashion, values, aspirations, struggles and ideologies of a society Changes or developments in these cultural elements are more obvious to outsiders than

insiders, and over a certain period of time rather than within a short period of time Second, the current beliefs or trends of the cultural elements in turn are believed to be used as the tools of writing by reporters (Berkowitz, 2011: xii) As

an ‘interpretive community’ (Zelizer, 1997), reporters pick up meanings in their culture as their effort to understand new happenings and to find a place for these events within their society’s historical and cultural narratives The old meanings may be incorporated into the new meanings, and new events have to be

interpreted and may be understood partly by the old meanings (Berkowitz, 2011: 115) Readers will find it easier to connect with news accounts of a tsunami, for example, if the articles can coherently frame this disaster report into the meaning systems of the society or the global world So the tsunami coverage is not only about data of victims and damages but also its impact on life and civilization The third concept in the cultural perspective of news is the concept of ‘collective memory’ (Halbwachs, 1951[1992]) Collective memory means the “socially constructed notion that brings together individuals, located in a specific group context, who remember a common past” Reporters often draw on events in the past to make sense of what is happening now They often frame new occurrences

in comparison with similar people or events in the past to argue about the scale or seriousness of the current events By doing so, reporters activate the historical cues in the readers’ memory and thus can put the new events into the perspective

of the readers Berkowitz (2011: 301) gives an example of how the US media often compare a presidential candidate with great American presidents such as Abraham Lincoln and John F Kennedy

In all, one can see that the aspects of the cultural perspective of news are similar with those of the cognitive and social perspectives of news processes The

difference is the domain where these processes take place – the human mind, or the community, society, culture or even the history of human kind At the

individual’s cognitive level, to be able to understand new stimulus each person needs to have relevant knowledge about it, otherwise it is passed by At the cultural level, new events can be understood only based on the past and shared experiences of the community which gradually and over time have shaped the way the community understands the present At this level, reporters belonging to

an “imagined community” of newspaper readers – borrowing Benedict

Anderson’s concept of a nation (1983, 1991, 2006) – are doing their function as the “collective memory agents” (Meyers, 2001: 322) to reconnect the community with the present happenings At the individual level, his/her product of

representation indicates and is influenced by his/her knowledge, ideologies, and belief systems The exchanges of knowledge, beliefs and memory resulting from the news processes, which take place in the social context relatively at the same time, also take place from generation to generation which build up the culture of the society Thus, the spiralling cycle of news, knowledge, society, and culture continues

1.3 Political and Historical Backgrounds of Australia-Indonesia Relations

Based on the social, cognitive and cultural perspectives above, it is necessary to observe the political and historical contexts of Australia-Indonesia relations as the

social and cultural backdrop of this study Despite their geographical proximity, Indonesia and Australia are very different Ball (1991: xv) said that they are two

‘unusual’ neighboring countries In fact, they are very different neighbors

geographically, historically, demographically, socially, culturally (e.g., Ball, 1995) Geographically, Australia is an arid island continent with a vast land surface; it has uninhabitated deserts in its center (Nicholson, 2011) Indonesia, on the contrary, is an archipelago of 13,667 islands with oceans and seas, and the land surface is only 25% of the Australian land The soil is relatively fertile due to the volcanic ashes from a number of volcanoes The different geographical

conditions shape the different lifestyles of the people Historically, their relations started in the pre-historic era with the Aborigines in Australia believed to have originated from the south-east Asian regions and migrated to the southern regions 50,000 to 70,000 years ago As they migrated passing the Indonesian archipelago, some groups were believed to have stayed in Indonesia while some others

continued their journey further down south From the 15th century, Bugis sailors from Indonesia and the Aborigines living in the northern coasts of Australia had

sold or exchanged goods, especially ‘teripang’ (sea cucumber), which was a

delicacy in Chinese restaurants in Australia (Blainey, 1994) Studies in history and linguistics have also pointed out that many loan words in the local Aborigine languages of the Northern Territory are of Bugis or Malay origin

Socially and culturally, Australia and Indonesia are very distant minimally in four aspects First, demographically, according to 2008 census, Indonesia’s population

is 227.8 million (http://www.dfat.gov.au/GEO/fs/indo.pdf), which is more than

ten times the Australian population, 21,664,000 people

(http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/3101.0/) Indonesians are composed mostly of indigenous peoples from around 500 tribes and a small percentage of Chinese and other non-indigenous Indonesians According to The World Factbook

October_2011.pdf)

Second, concerning the population and culture, Indonesians, who are believed to have originated from Yunnan, China, have developed an Asian, eastern or the diverse traditional local cultures For example, Javanese tradition in Central and East Java is different from Sundanese in West Java All of these are also different from Bataknese in North Sumatra, Ambonese in the Mollucas, Balinese in Bali and so are other local traditions The present Australians, on the contrary, with a majority of white descendants from British, Irish and other European immigrants, have adopted a predominantly western culture Third, concerning the people and religion, it was estimated in 2009 that almost 90% of Indonesians are Muslims (http://www.pewforum.org); in fact, Indonesia has become the biggest Muslim- populated nation in the world Consequently, Islam is used as the basis for the

law, policy and daily living in the society Australia, on the other hand, which was originally a Christian community, has become a secular country, and along with its multicultural policy, it leaves it to the members of its society whether to

observe religion or not And fourth, concerning standards of living, Indonesia’s are lower than Australia’s The World Bank classifies Indonesia as a developing country with a low-income economy, while Australia as a developed country (data.worldbank.org)

In terms of political relations, according to Silalahi (1991: 6), Australia-Indonesia relations have not been easy Historically, Australia is remembered as a strong supporter of the independence declaration of Indonesia in August 1945, “the only Western-bloc country to do so” (Brown, 1996: p 1) Australia mediated the

Linggarjati Treaty that later brought the full recognition of Indonesia’s

independence by the Dutch in 1948 However, Australia was also suspected of holding back when it did not support the inclusion of West Papua into the

Republic of Indonesia In 1962-1966, tensions between Indonesia and Australia grew when Australia backed Malaysia instead of Indonesia during Soekarno’s

Konfrontasi (confrontation) with Malaysia regarding the northern part of Borneo, which later became East Malaysia The unresolved conflicts created further

distance between the two countries, and the tensions became worse when

Soekarno, the first president of Indonesia, formed closer ties with communist China and the Soviet Union, which were perceived as threats by Australia

When General Soeharto became the second president of Indonesia in 1966, early

relations with Australia seemed positive and promising (Brown, 1996: 2) This was because Soeharto’s government was viewed by most Australians as anti-communist and economically welcoming for foreign trade and investments However, friction emerged when Indonesia invaded East Timor in 1975 Five Australian-based journalists were brutally killed while secretly filming the

invasion and another one when investigating the killings (Kingsbury, 1997: 1-8) For the Australians and as reported in the Australian media, the invasion and the killing of unarmed civilians were serious human rights abuses Australia’s

position as a strong supporter for East Timor’s independence made relations with Indonesia tense, because it had been made the 27th province of the Republic of Indonesia Indonesia accused the Australian media for interfering its domestic matters and being insensitive to its culture (Kingsbury, 1997: 7) Tensions further

escalated with the publication of articles in The Sydney Morning Herald in 1986

about Soeharto who was suspected to have embezzled billions of state funds, and

in 1991 about the massacre of unarmed mourners in Dili cemetery by the

Indonesian military Bilateral relations were said to have dropped at the lowest point, although both governments tried to craft careful political statements to prevent the relations from worsening

After Soeharto’s fall in 1998, the vice president BJ Habibie became Indonesia’s president Despite his short term of office, he is remembered as the Indonesian president who allowed a referendum in East Timor in 1999, which led to its independence in 2002 Australia led the peace-keeping mission troops from

almost twenty countries during the transition period Back in Indonesia, the first

general election after Soeharto’s fall was conducted in 1999 in which the

president was decided by the People’s Consultative Assembly (MPR – Majelis Permusyawaratan Rakyat), the highest government body in Indonesia’s political

system Abdurrahman Wahid became the fourth president with Megawati

Soekarnoputri as the vice president, although Megawati gained 33% of the votes and Wahid only 12% (Kingsbury, 2005) Many domestic problems arose mainly due to president Wahid’s erratic remarks and Indonesia’s newly found freedom of speech because people could now speak out whatever they wanted to say The Indonesian broadcast and print news were never short of materials comprising accusations and counter-accusations, surprises, confusion, protests and counter-protests among Indonesians

In 2001, the People’s Consultative Assembly impeached president Wahid after a tug of war among the president, the parliament, the Armed Forces and some cabinet ministers The Assembly decided that Megawati become the president During her presidency from 2001-2004 several suicide bombings took place and killed many people The most serious were the Bali bombings in 2002 which killed 202 people, including 88 Australians This was followed by other bombings

in Bali and The Australian Embassy in Jakarta until 2009 Instead of condemning Indonesia, Australia helped the Indonesian police with DNA and communication technologies, and the two countries worked together to fight terrorism

The data analysed in this study start from this background with the 2004 general election, and end in December 2009 Within that period, under the government of

President Yudhoyono in Indonesia and two prime ministers in Australia, John Howard and Kevin Rudd, the bilateral relations were described as ‘friendly,’

‘close’ and ‘positive’ by leaders of both countries (e.g., Banham et al, 2005;

Forbes, 2008) In this political context, this study was conducted

1.4 Organization of Thesis

This thesis is organized into seven chapters The motivation of the study, the research questions, purpose and research approach were introduced in Chapter One This chapter also discusses the theoretical perspectives of the study and the political and historical background of Australia-Indonesia relations Chapter Two, which is the review of the related literature, discusses three main theoretical areas

of this study: representation, news and critical discourse analysis Chapter Three presents the proposed analytical framework: the news actor analysis, the news action analysis and the author evaluation analysis The methods of collecting and analyzing the data are also discussed here The findings and the discussions are presented in Chapters Four, Five and Six Finally, Chapter Seven, which is the conclusion, summarizes the findings, discusses the contributions, implications and limitations of this study, and offers suggestions for further research

of Indonesia in Australian media The third section discusses frameworks in Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) which deal with the news media representation used in this study This chapter concludes with a summary of how these three topics are interrelated within the social, cognitive and cultural perspectives of news processes discussed in Chapter One

2.1 Representation

Representation is a complicated concept This term is used in many disciplines such as philosophy, mathematics, psychology, sociology, architecture, medicine, arts, media and communication studies, law and legal studies, politics, linguistics, and many others The term has also been commonly used in political practices, business and even daily conversations Consequently, ‘representation’ has become

a word with many meanings This section discusses the concepts of

‘representation’ and deals with the complexity of representation in relation to

‘reality’ The last part of this section offers a basic scheme of representation as process and product

2.1.1 The Concepts of Representation

According to Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, the word ‘representation’ can refer

to an object or subject that represents, the action of representing, and the body representing a constituency (www.merriam-webster.com) Looking into its

dictionary meanings, ‘to represent’ suggests three basic meanings First, it

involves an object standing on behalf of another object such as in legal cases, politics and business For example, a Member of Parliament represents his/her constituents in parliamentary debates Second, ‘to represent’ may involve a concrete object to refer to other concrete object or abstract values such as those in arts, architecture or philosphy For example, an abstract sculpture could represent

a concrete object, such as one of the sculptures created by Inigo Manglano-Ovalle and installed in Singapore in 2006 (http://my.opera.com/BabyJay99/albums/-14 December 2011) It is said to represent the part of an iceberg hidden under the sea (Picture1a), a concrete-but-invisible object Another sculpture, created by

Fernando Botero and placed at Boat Quay in Singapore, is made of bronze and in the form of a bird (Picture1b) This concrete object – the bird statue – is said to represent abstract qualites, that is, ‘peace, serenity, the joy of living and the power of optimism’ (http://www.publicart.sg/?q=Botero-Bird -14 December

2011), as the plague accompanying the statue wrote A third meaning of ‘to

represent’ is to relate one actor to other groups of people having similar

characteristics For example, the character of Kate Reddy in I Don’t Know How

She Does It (Picture 1c) is used to represent millions of middle-class career

women in the US who have to juggle between family gatherings and business

trips (http://www.imbd.com/media/ - 14 December 2011) In essence, ‘to

represent’ involves at least an object which represents, another object being

represented and a human being who produce the representation Thus, the noun,

‘representation’, can mean the process of representing and also the product of the representing act

Picture 1a Iceberg in

http://www.singapore-vacation-Picture 1c Film flier (Source: http://www.imdb.com/media/r m1494007296/tt1742650 - 14 Dec 2011)

Figure 2.1 Examples of Representations

Not only has ‘representation’ commonly been used in many disciplines and

professions, politics, arts and the media, it has also grown important in our daily life, such as in everyday conversation Every utterance that comes out of our mouth is a representation of our thoughts, feelings and opinions In gossiping, speakers make many representations which reflect their evaluations of people, events or objects In disputes, one side commonly makes positive self-

representations about themselves and their allies, and negative representations about their opponents (van Dijk, 1998b) Beyond personal conversations, human beings practically live within a world of representations and at the same time produce representations as well Webb (2009:2) says that, “ we live immersed

in representation .” Advertisements and commercials, television shows and drama series, films, and news are all representations at the social level about the world we live in These are offered and sometimes forced onto us to create

concepts in our minds about the world that we may never personally experience

At the individual or personal level, each person may listen to their teacher,

parents, and colleagues about the world that they believe and experience, and then represent or share that knowledge to others Besides the representations from and about the world around us that we receive consciously or unconsciously, we also commonly produce representations when we describe a person, a thing or an event based on our knowledge, experience and wishes Representation thus occurs and

is being used pervasively in our daily life

Among the many different concepts and usages of representation (e.g., Hall, 1997; Pitkin, 1967; Marin, 2001), this study is aligned with Gronbeck’s concepts of

representation (2007: xiii-xix) First, representation is an impression or a sense of presence or appearance This means “a relationship between some aspect or

characteristic of a person and a meaningful image or signified that was left upon a perceiver’s mind” (2007:xiii) This refers to how a person represents him-/herself

by his/her appearance in front of others creating a certain impression about /herself in the minds of those who see him/her In fashion, for example, a female university student who daily wears T-shirt, jeans and sneakers may one day dress

him-up in a shirt, skirt, blazer, and lady’s shoes to be ready for a job interview A particular representation then not only presents or exhibits the identity of what or who is presented, but can also construct or create an identity depending on the situation According to Marin (2001: 352), this is the transitive meaning of

‘representation’, that is, an object or an image that “represents something”, that is, characteristics of something

The second meaning of representation proposed by Gronbeck (2007) is a material substitution of a person or thing when he/she/it is not present, for example by a photograph, a holographic image or an audio recording of his/her voice This is similar to Prendergast’s (2000: 4) sense of a representation that it “substitute [s] something for something or someone else” According to Marin (2001:352), this

is the reflexive meaning of representation, that is, a representation that ”presents itself representing something” A photograph of a person is definitely not the person but the substitution of the person in the scene of the photograph

The third meaning of representation according to Gronbeck is an extension of the second, but in this case, discourse, speech act or language is attached to the

meaning of representation Referring to Sut Jhally’s production, Gronbeck said that this type of representation “becomes a constitutive process” (2007: xiv) Language is used not only to substitute for the ‘reality’ by verbally naming or describing it when speakers or writers make a representation of that reality, but also to create new meaning of that reality in the representation This concept is supported by Prendergast (2000: 4) who said that language can make concrete things or ideas ‘occur’ in the discourse For example, the word ‘rabbit’ in a story refers to the animal and the writer does not have to bring the real live animal to the story According to Webb (2009: 39), language is “what makes us human” She further writes,

It makes us – that is, constructs us – in a very real sense because to be a

member of society, and hence recognized as a person, you must have access to language The language we speak, how we speak it, with what accent, what fluency and what content, determines who we can be in the world, and sets in motion a series of ideas, knowledges and attitudes about and for us (2009: 39)

In another part of her discussion, Webb also writes that language is a ‘vehicle for representation’ (2009: 43), meaning that language is the means to carry one’s representation about the world While other semiotic sources, such as visual images, can also become vehicles for representation, language has the sense and meaning of non-verbal representations as intended by the representer For

example, a painting or a sculpture may be accompanied by a written caption which explains the meaning of that art work It can help viewers interpret the

meaning as it is intended by the painter or sculpture However, language has also

a limitation in carrying out one’s representation This will be discussed further

The fourth meaning of representation in Gronbeck’s list is the typification in the democratization process in relation to a legislative or deliberative assembly The representation is done by choosing, assigning, or selecting a member of the group based on the common type (typification) or the dominant type (prototypification) This concept is used most often in politics (e.g., proportional constituency in general election) and in business (e.g., in marketing/survey) This typification in democratization is not used in the analysis of data in this study

Media representation can include all the four meanings above, but news

representation mainly refer to the second and third meanings, that is, the

substitution and the discursive meanings of representation The pictures or videos accompanying the news texts (especially those in online news) substitute for the presence of persons or events; and the words, sentences and paragraphs in the texts make representations through the verbal description of persons or events This study focuses on the third meaning of representation, that is, the discourse meaning of representation, because the data are composed only of the written texts and the analyses are geared toward the written data only

2.1.2 Representation and Reality

Deleuze (1990) says that human representation is a complex matter Indeed, this concept is complex because of its relativity and partiality: which reality we hold

or keep in our minds First, a representation is not the mirror of similarities

between itself and the reality it stands for (Webb, 2009) Webb explains that before the Enlightenment a representation was understood as ‘resemblance’ or a thing having similarities with another thing it stands for After the Enlightenment, however, people realized that a representation was in fact different from the real object it represented She gives an example about the ‘female’ and ‘male’ toilet signs, which earlier were believed to resemble a female and a male, while in fact, those signs do not indicate their main differing characteristic, that is, their sexual organs In fact, those signs are only representations of female and male which are

accepted by the society and become one of the cultural codes

According to Deleuze, a representation is a ‘mirror of difference’ (1990: 48) He gave an example of a person and his/her name, where both represent each other in

a circular way although they are definitely made of different materials The person

of a name represents that name materially as the holder of that name A name gives an identity to that person (among the crowds), and the person characterizes his/her name, because his/her name will be remembered by his/her friends through his/her habits, characters and personality Sometimes we say about someone, for example, ‘It’s not Bob if he’s not late’, because we are waiting for him and he has the habit of being late

Second, although ‘representation’ is used commonly in many fields, language users only roughly understand its meanings, either as ‘a description’, ‘not the reality itself’, or ‘standing in for’ the reality People often use the word to mean an

object which is not the exact or intended object but stands in for someone or something concrete or abstract

Third, in relation to ‘reality’, a representation is a personal reproduction of one’s ideas, knowledge, values or beliefs (van Dijk and Kintsch, 1983) Thus, there will

be many possible ‘realities’ because one person understands and experiences the world around him/her differently from how other persons do Furthermore, in producing a representation, one is influenced by his/her goals, values and

priorities (Fairclough, 1995a: 41) Different people will then produce different representations about the world, events, people and objects around them, because every person has different goals and purposes when they make certain

representations

Van Leeuwen (2008) emphasizes that making a representation is basically a recontextualization of social practices into a discourse These social practices undergo certain transformations to fit into the new context, that is, the

recontextualizing discourse This discourse, as a genre, will have its own

constraints of how to frame these social practices to be presented in the discourse Consequently, there are criteria for selecting which social practices or parts of a social practice are to be included or excluded in the discourse context There are also decisions based on the person’s goals of which social practices to be

foregrounded and backgrounded Thus, bias and manipulation are possible

because every person will transform the social practice into his/her discourse in such a way to achieve his/her goals Deleuze (1990) also confirms that it is not just the reality, or the ‘social practices’ in van Leeuwen’s term, that a representing

agent brings to an audience; but rather, a certain meaning of that reality that he/she offers to the audience Thus, a representation can be personal The

audience should then understand that the representation is not the same as the reality; in fact, it is only a mediation between the audience and the ‘reality’ that a representing agent puts in front of them (O’Shaughnessy and Stadler, 2005: 74)

In other words, a representation is an interpretation of reality as seen or

experienced by a representing agent who then shares it with an audience

Following Marin (2001) and Deleuze (1994), this study accepts their proposal that

a representation does not only present meaning as it is commonly known and accepted by the audience, but rather, it also makes meaning by giving a new or special meaning to an event or putting meaning which is there but rarely seen by others

The above concepts of representation are relevant to describe representations in news articles News articles do not report events or people as they are Rather, news articles are the reporters’ or the editors’ understanding or interpretation of the events which they publish and share with the readers In doing so, they are strongly influenced by their past experiences, knowledge, ideologies, values and goals of writing the news Therefore, it is not surprising that news accounts of one event can be different in different newspapers that publish them The main

concern towards representations made in news media is the question of whose representation or whose ‘reality’ is projected in the news articles (Fairclough, 1995a: 15; Allan, 2004: 46) Because many news media depend on the ruling goverment, businesses or the ruling class, it is highly probable that it is their

‘reality’ for their benefit that is projected in the news Over time, the readers, in general, may accept this as the truth

2.1.3 Representation as Process and Product

From the above discussion on the meanings of representation, it can be concluded that a representation can mean both the process of representing and the product of the act of representing

Representation as a process is basically an image-making process (Lacey, 1998) Based on his explanation, in Figure 2.2., I draw four elements and their relations which are involved in a representation process The four elements are: (1) the represented object or subject, (2) the representing agent, (3) the result or the product, and (4) the audience