Corpus-based Analysis of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Representations in Republika

In the mass media of Indonesia, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) issues and news are often marked topics. Indonesian media report LGBT news in three main ways: (1) with a proportional, measured response; (2) with a distorted focus on sexuality and sensation; and (3) out of proportion in response to religious views. Only the first of these variants arc able to maintain neutrally on LGBT issues. This paper examines how the LGBT community was represented in the 2016 corpus of the daily newspaper Republika. Fowler's Language in the news (1991) discussion of representation in news media and Stubbs's Text and corpus analysis (1996) corpus-based theory were used to investigate representations of LGBT issues in Republika. A collocation analysis of the LGBT node in concordance analyses indicates that there were eight types of LGBT representation in the 2016 Republika corpus, six of which were negative which are as a phenomenon, as sexual deviation, as an uninherited sexual orientation, as against religion, as actors and victims of crime, and as contrary to Islam; the remaining two representations were neutral.