Women’s Representation in the News of “Sexual Violence” in Online News Media

Abstract

This research is motivated by the high rate of sexual violence against women in Indonesia, which is often represented unevenly by the mass media, so that it tends to corner victims and reinforce gender stereotypes. The purpose of this study is to analyze and compare the representation of women in the reporting of sexual violence in two mainstream online news media in Indonesia, namely Kompas.com and Tempo.co, using a corpus linguistic approach. The method used is a mixed method, which combines quantitative analysis through word frequency, collocation, and concordance. Meanwhile, qualitative analysis through a critical discourse analysis approach. The research data consisted of 50 news articles related to sexual violence against women collected through observation techniques and document studies. The results of the study show that there is a significant difference in discourse strategies between the two media. Kompas.com tends to represent women directly as individual victims (victim-centered) by highlighting the identity and personal experiences of the victims. In contrast, Tempo.co emphasizes sexual violence as an issue-centered social, legal, and institutional issue, where women are often positioned as part of an institutional, policy, or legal process object rather than as subjects with personal experience. Despite the differences in the style of presenting the news, the two media still tend to place women in passive and subordinate positions that are limited to their status as victims in need of protection.