Political news construction in post-authoritarian Indonesia: citizen journalism in online news media during the 2017 election

Prawira, Indra (2019) Political news construction in post-authoritarian Indonesia: citizen journalism in online news media during the 2017 election. Doctoral thesis, Northumbria University.

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Abstract

This study was conducted in the response to the lack of empirical study of citizen journalism (CJ) within an online journalistic field in a newly democratic country. This study adopts Bourdieu’s (1998, 2005) field theory, the social theory of journalism of McQuail (2013) and McCombs’ (2014) agenda-setting theory to understand the “struggle" of the legacy media in defending its position within society as the mediator of political communication. It utilises parallel convergent mixed-methods with qualitative data is collected based on an ethnographical study of three major Indonesian online news media outlets. It analysed 33 media staffs interview results about news production during the 2017 Indonesian election. Meanwhile, the quantitative data was generated from published political news content during January- March 2017.

The analysis of data shows that CJ put pressure on the journalistic fields so that journalists made efforts to maintain their status quo. Journalists are adapting their journalistic norms and traditions so as to defend their position in dominating political communication and influencing public opinion. This study argues that the online news media are engaged three areas of struggle; that is struggles to find a business model, to be equally recognised as offering quality journalism, and to compete with non-professional journalists. This study provides an original contribution to research on journalism in explaining the development of CJ in the Indonesian context both theoretically and empirically.

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