The Image of Female Athletes in Indonesian Online News
Mundi Rahayu (a*), Mediyansyah(a), Dwi Cahyo Kartiko (b), Deny Efita Nur Rakhmawati (a)

a) English Literature Department, Faculty of Humanities, UIN Maulana Malik Ibrahim Malang, Indonesia.
*) mundi[at]bsi.uin-malang.ac.id
b) Physical Education Department, Faculty of Sport Science, Universitas Negeri Surabaya, Indonesia.

Abstract

In Indonesia, sport has become more popular and more money is infused in the sport industry, so that it is important to examine the sociological implications of sport and athletes within society. Sport has important function as it also influences to construct the norms, values, and beliefs of the larger social practices. Although there are many more females athletes involved in many kinds of sports, it still needs an examination on their position in this sport landscape. Sport use media as the way to promote its whole business, and the media constructs the gender stereotypes and gender relation through written words and photographs. To get the understanding on the issue of women image in sport, this paper aims at examining the image of female athletes in Indonesian online newspaper. There are several online newspapers taken as the data source (sports.okezone.com, Kompas.com, fajarpendidikan.co.id, kumparan.com and tribunnews.com). The analysis applies Fairclough^s Critical Discourse Analysis, that applies the three levels of analysis: micro (text), meso (discourse), and macro (social-political context). The result of the study shows that the coverage of female athletes is quantitatively less compared to the male, and discourse of women^s beauty dominated the coverage on female athletes, which tends to objectify female athletes.

Keywords: CDA, female athletes, Indonesian, image, online news

Topic: Gender and sports in Asian societies