SOCIAL ACTORS’ REPRESENTATION IN ONLINE MALAYSIAN NEWSPAPERS DURING ELECTIONS: A TRANSITIVITY ANALYSIS OF NEWSPAPER TEXT

Abstract

Purpose of the study: This study aimed to find out the meaning behind the text of two streams of online newspapers in Malaysia, the present study is conducted on ‘Malaysiakini’ (independent newspaper) and ‘The News Straits Times’ (mainstream newspaper). Methodology: The research employs Norman Fairclough (1995) Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), which is analyzed with Halliday’s Systematic Functional Linguistics (SFL) based on social semiotics analysis (1985). Transitivity Analysis of text is based on Halliday’s work by Matthiessen (2014). Sixteen-16 (6,125 words) hard news is selected from ‘Malaysiakini’ and five-5 (2,270 words) from ‘The New Straits Times’ based on the ‘defamation’ category, which is selected from one week before elections. The selected dates of data are 3rd May till 9th May 2018. The news reports are selected on social actors’ performances i.e. Dr.Mahathir Mohamad and Najib Razak, which are based on van Leeuwen’s (2005) social semiotic framework. Main Findings: The results show Malaysiakini has portrayed independent views and given fair portrayal to both political social actors as compared to ‘The News Straits Times’. Applications of this study: The study can be useful in print journalism in which grammatical words’ analysis through the process of transitivity leads to determine the inclination of the newspaper towards a political party. Novelty/Originality of this study: The study may benefit readers in existing knowledge as elections’ social actors have not been analyzed earlier grammatically.