Framing Analysis: The Image of Indonesian Government in The Handling of Covid-19 Pandemic in Online News Media (Kompas.Com And Detik.Com)

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic is one of the historical events recorded in 21st century. Therefore, the performance of the Indonesian government in controlling this pandemic has become a major concern for media institutions. This study aimed to determine the framing of the issue and image of the Indonesian government in managing the COVID-19 pandemic in online news Kompas.com and Detik.com. The news reporting period began from March 2nd, 2020 (when the government announced the first COVID-19 cases, until June 30th, 2020, when the government eased the Large-Scale Social Restrictions (PSBB) and new normal policy. This study used Pan and Kosicki's framing analysis method with a constructivist paradigm. Pan and Kosicki's method utilized four elements of analysis: 1) syntactic structure, 2) script structure, 3) thematic structure, and 4) rhetorical structure, which represents the structural dimensions of a news story. The finding shows that in the issue of pandemic handling, Kompas.com focused more on health issues while Detik.com focused on economic issues. Meanwhile, the Indonesian government image tended to be negative with unclear policies, poor performance and incompetence in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic problem.