Female Politicians Representation’s in Corruption Cases in Online News

Abstract

Despite having thirty per cent quota of parliamentary seats, women in fact are only able to fill up the quota amount of 23 per cent. This certainly has a great influence for women’s active participation in politics in most countries worldwide. In Indonesia, the image of women’s roles associated with politics is statistically unfavorable. With a strong patriarchal system, men still have a bigger role in politics rather than women. The images of female political actors also still tend to be flawed. Woman makes headlines in politics when she becomes the object of scandal. On the other hand stereotypes and gender bias between men and women will always exist in the mass media. Stereotypes are used to describe the social categories of men and women. In the news, text can be seen how media and journalists use gender categories in political news. This research uses discourse analysis method in online news text. The analysis focuses on the usage of language in the social context. By using the concept of text analysis, it can be seen how the news about women politicians depicted in the form of writing or discourse. The theory used in this research is Stuart Hall’s representation. Using the concept of representation from Stuart Hall, it could be seen that online news portals have a gender bias in reporting corruption cases of female political actors. Through representation, the meaning was produced and exchanged among members of society and displaying distinctive images for female political actors in Indonesia. Keywords: women in politic, online media, online news, gender bias, female politician