ABSTRACT

This research was conducted to discover the ideology of news texts published in four online newspapers: CNN.com, Sydney Morning Herald (SMH), Aljazeera, and Arab News that reported about US intervention in Syrian war in 2017. This research is based on a Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) approach from within Martin theory (1992 & 2007), focusing on nuclear relation and activity sequences that belong to ideational meaning analysis.

It employs descriptive qualitative research. Criterion-based sampling technique is used to select the data. Domain, taxonomic, componential, and cultural value analysis are applied to interpret data analysis. The realization of nuclear relation and activity sequences are analysed to find out the ideology of the news  text.  Text  structure analysis  (within  conjunctive analysis) is  also attached to explore its genre and ideology of both texts.

The results of the analysis show that by looking at the nuclear relation (such as Process = Range, Process + Medium + Range, Classifier = Thing, and Thing x Qualifier), activity sequences, and genre of the text, the ideology in every news text can be determined. So, according to the analysis, online newspapers published by Western publishers (CNN.com and SMH) tend to be right antagonist and right protagonist, means supporting US and tend to against Syria. Meanwhile, online newspapers published by Middle East publishers (Aljazeera and Arab News) tends to be left antagonist and left protagonist, means supporting Syria and against US.

Keywords: SFL, nuclear relation, activity sequence, genre, ideology, Syrian war