School of Social and Political Sciences - Theses
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ItemRepresentations of gender in the Indonesian media: a case study of the coverage of Megawati Sukarnoputri's presidential campaigns in 1999, 2004 and 2009 elections( 2015)This thesis examines the representation of gender in the Indonesian media with a case study of Megawati Sukarnoputri’s presidential candidacies. The objective of this study is to demonstrate how media representations of a female presidential candidate were shaped by different contextual variables, in particular different newspapers’ policies, different electoral systems, and different political positions. It analyses the coverage of Megawati’s presidential bids in three different national newspapers namely Kompas, Jawa Pos and Republika, in the 1999, 2004 and 2009 elections. Applying the critical discourse analysis developed by Norman Fairclough and Teuw Van Dijk, this study examines the coverage of Megawati’s presidential bids in the three newspapers and its link to sets of social, cultural and religious values as well as the newspapers’ political and economic interests. Drawing on extensive analyses of news articles selected from the three national newspapers and in-depth interviews with the chief editors, political reporters, women’s activists and Megawati’s campaign team, this thesis argues that the continuous pattern of stereotypical narratives of femininity when reporting on female political leadership was evident in the three post-Suharto elections. It also argues that femininity attracted more media attention than that of the masculinity in the political arena because Megawati as a female presidential candidate was considered as a novelty. This thesis concludes that the political euphoria and the liberalisation of press in post-authoritarian Indonesia opened up new opportunities for the Indonesian media to discuss women’s political participation. Furthermore, the thesis suggests that the Indonesian media freely exacerbated the polemics about Megawati’s presidential bids in the three elections, resulting in heightened gendered reporting and that the media tended to treat gender and politics as saleable news commodities. The thesis concludes that the newly found media freedom brought novel forms of stereotyping that might influence people’s perception about female political leadership.