Abstrak

News is not free from interest. It is the product of dialectic between phenomena that happens and the values applied by media, so that news reality is considered as subjective reality. The disbandment of Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia (HTI) has attracted some media to actively report it in form of news. This research examines the news construction of HTI’s disbandment in two Indonesian English-online newspapers. Those newspapers are the Jakarta Post and Jakarta Globe. Moreover, it will also examine the reasons the newspapers constructed news the way they do.

This research is a descriptive-qualitative research using Socio-Cognitive approach proposed by van Dijk. The Socio-Cognitive approach consists of the analysis of Text, Social Cognition, and Social Context dimensions. The source of data of this research is three news texts from each newspaper. In total, there are six news texts that are analyzed. The news texts are chosen using purposive sampling technique with some criteria: (1) the texts are taken from Indonesian online newspaper in English version; (2) the texts are published during the process of disbanding HTI started from July 2017 until May 2018; (3) the texts are about the process of disbanding HTI including when a regulation in lieu of law was signed or issued, when HTI’s legal status was officially revoked, and when HTI’s plea was rejected.

The texts were analyzed based on van Dijk’s method of textual analysis. They were classified into tables that consist of the analysis of macrostructure, superstructure, and microstructure. Macrostructure focused on analyzing the news headline, superstructure analyzed the schema of the news, and microstructure analyzed the small part of the text such as words and sentences.

This research found that based on textual analysis, the government and HTI are portrayed as two opposing parties. The government is described as ruling regime having authority to maintain national interests that is Pancasila as well as national unity, diversity, and security, while HTI is described as the organization against national interest. Thus, the disbandment of HTI is a correct step to defend national interests. Furthermore, this research revealed that the history, vision mission, previous experience and the political interest of special political elites in media has had decisive influence in transforming reality into news texts.

Keywords: news construction, Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia, HTI disbandment, Socio-Cognitive approach