Revealing Representation of China and America by the Media of CNBC Indonesia Relating to South China Sea Conflict

Abstract

In reporting conflict between countries, media was never possible to present completely neutral, accurate and full picture of the issues, instead it offered representations through language. This study aimed to reveal the representation of China and USA in coverage of SCSC by CNBC Indonesia. The research data were text excerpts of the reports (words, phrases, and sentences) which interpretatively constructed the media's representation. Data analysis was carried out descriptive-critically using Fairclough critical discourse analysis (CDA) model to describe the utilization of linguistic features (word choice, transitivity, modality, and rhetoric trope) in constructing representation of the story. The results showed that there was polarity representation of participants, actions, and events. The negative representation was labeled for China; conversely, positive representation was embedded for USA. In addition, it could also be interpreted that the media representation was influenced by the situational context of media institutions in selecting and organizing their news and the socio-political context, which gave rise to the choice of representation in reporting the SCS conflict.