New York Times’s Representation of The First Women Leaders in Southeast Asia: A Critical Discourse Analysis

Abstract

This study investigates the unjust representation report in four New York Times‟s selected articles. This study applies several theories related to mass media discourse and gender representation in media‟s theory. The Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) model by Fairclough (1989) is chosen as the framework for this study. Then, the analysis operates Systemic Functional Linguistic (SFL) focused on ideational, interpersonal metafunctions, and clause complexing related to interdependency and logico-semantic relations as a tool to uncover gender imbalance report through textual analysis. Meanwhile, gender representation in media by Lazar is combined to socio-cultural context and situation related to gender imbalance report issue in Asia. This thesis employed qualitative method and documentary as its research strategy. Meanwhile, Generic Structure Potential (GSP) was applied to collect the data which were in form of clauses of written text. The results show that imbalance report exists in those selected articles. The implication was seen from the way of The New York Times‟s journalists who report of the first women leaders in Southeast Asia to be unequal to men, the misrepresentation of women portrayal, and negative stereotypes image. Therefore, the influence of patriarchal culture of America created since 20th and 21st century, the construction of women is shaped by American mass media in domestication arena. This pattern has tendency to abuse women in their professional carrier rather than to support them as powerful individual. As one of American‟s mass media, New York Times followed that similar pattern and performs abusive report towards the first women leaders in Southeast Asia