The Jakarta Post Coverage of Indonesian Presidential Candidates in 2019

This research analyzes 119 online news articles in The Jakarta Post from January to April 2019, leading to the 2019 national election, through content analysis, based on the issues tackled in the national debate organized by General Election Commission of Indonesia. Besides, this study adds a segment of categories encapsulating the issues exposed from the review of related studies. The intercoder reliability test shows a very good rate (coders 1 and 3: k=0.83; coders 1 and 2: k=0.84; coders 2 and 3: k=0.94). The study reveals that both candidates get the same opportunity to be framed objectively.

The media news coverage was no escape in the discussion of the 2019 Indonesian national elections and its democracy, particularly on issues of the presidential debate. Agenda setting and framing in media displayed a crucial aspect during the campaign period (Mun & Li, 2011, p. 44;Dekavalla, 2018Dekavalla, , pp. 1603Dekavalla, -1604O'Malley, Brandenburg, Flynn, McMenamin, & Rafter, 2012, p. 6). How media, particularly newspapers, set their agenda and frame the presidential candidates influences the voting turnouts.
Tresch (2012, p. 288) states that news coverage of newspapers plays an essential role in influencing voters through the content informing the candidates.
As one of the English news portals in Indonesia, The Jakarta Post offers quantitatively more political news, particularly presidential candidates during the debate periods. Only then offers printed broadsheets, The Jakarta Post ranked second among the most well-known newspapers in Indonesia (The Jakarta Post, 2014) and widely relying upon by the international community with a circulation of 50,000 (Press Reference, n.d.), started to produce its online edition free to access through The Jakarta Post.com (The Jakarta Post, 2011) since Indonesia had an internet penetration of 53.7 percent.

The news coverage of The Jakarta
Post can lead to democratic erosion in Indonesia, particularly The Jakarta Post.
com, where information becomes more accessible and crucial to Indonesian voters' choice and democracy. However, this online news portal can be biased if it favors one candidate by positively covering one candidate more than another.
The media news coverage is no escape in the discussion of the 2019 Indonesian national elections and its democracy. Pieces of literature show how agenda-setting (Mun & Li, 2011, p. 44) and framing (Dekavalla, 2018(Dekavalla, , pp. 1603(Dekavalla, -1604O'Malley, et al., 2012, p. 6) in media display fundamental and essential elements during the period of the campaign, particularly the presidential campaign since this issue had been massively discussed among voters. Adams and Joslyn (in Lo, King, Chen, & Huang, 1996, p. 44) studied how most voters were highly dependent on media to inform political candidates and their policies.
Nevertheless, more recent studies underline how mass media are being used by the politicians to persuade the public to get voted from them in the election (Mun & Li, 2011, p. 37). News presentations in media, specifically in online portals, have studied to have huge effects on voter turnouts and vote preferences (Bachmann, Kaufhold, Lewis, & Gil de Zúñiga, 2010, p. 42). Lippmann (in Mun & Li, 2011, p. 32) states how media can shape "pictures in our heads". In the digital era, information  (Muhtadi, 2018). Though illegal, the Asia Foundation survey in 2013 said 11.8 percent of Indonesians do not mind voting the candidates involved in vote-buying (Anggriani, et al., 2014, p. 46 Figure 1 shows the framework of the study.

METHOD
The investigation of this study was performed using quantitative content analysis to gather more specific data. Therefore, the researchers get easier to collect, evaluate, and sum up data. Procedure of content analysis should be systematic since it analyzes the content of recorded information (Wimmer & Dominick, 2011, p. 156). Such quantitative instrumentation can assist researchers in obtaining greater precision. Moreover, content analysis is an established approach for such a study. It has been massively used to conduct research on printed texts and communication media (van Dijk, 2011, p. 18), since this approach will help to study and analyze communication phenomenon in order to measure variables, by considering systematic, objective, and quantitative manners (Fico, Lacy, & Riffe, 2008, p. 118). Therefore, the researchers utilized coding sheets with an organized code guide in collecting data needed to measure the variables.

The body of the study was obtained from
The Jakarta Post's online news archive. The Although it should be noted that the participants during the debate III were only the vice-presidential candidates, the researchers still included the issues because these were critical issues that were needed to be addressed.
Pre-testing categories of issues were conducted to measure the inter-coder reliability rate. It is to ensure that the categories of issues stated in the coding instructions were mutually exclusive, exhaustive, and reliable. According to Wimmer and Dominick (2011, p. 172), the recommended subsample of the data is between 10 percent and 25 percent, and this will be re-analyzed by independent coders to calculate an overall inter-coder reliability coefficient rate.
The researchers downloaded samples from the Jakarta Globe to be utilized in the pre-testing. Using Cohen's Kappa, with the help of SPSS, the researchers calculated their inter-coder reliability. During their first attempt to code, they were not able to comply with the reliability passing rate wherein coders 1 and 3, and coders 1 and 2 got a fair rate (k=0.37; k=0.36), while coders 2 and 3 got a reasonable rate (k=0.62). On their second attempt, however, they were able to pass the inter-coder reliability test and get an outstanding rate (coders 1 and 3: k=0.83; coders 1 and 2: k=0.84; coders 2 and 3: k=0.94).
Using a quantitative design for this study, the researchers used data collection methods and techniques geared towards content analysis, which is more concerned with measurement and quantification.
Moreover, the researchers utilized the SPSS software in analyzing the data for this study.

FINDINGS
This study investigates the news coverage in The Jakarta Post from January to April 2019, leading to the 2019 Indonesian national election. Specifically, it focused on reporting political news on the two presidential candidates and how they appear in this online news portal in terms of national issue frames.

The Volume of News Coverage by The Jakarta Post for Each Presidential Candidate
The findings reveal that most news articles exposed Joko Widodo (79.8 percent), while a significant majority of news covered Prabowo Subianto (64.7 percent). Moreover, McNemar's test of related samples shows that there is a significant difference in the news coverage of Joko Widodo and Prabowo Subianto, p = 0.000.

The Issues Linked to Each Presidential Candidate
The top five issues most covered by The Jakarta Post on Joko Widodo were about governance (17.6 percent), experience in politics (16.8 percent), human rights (13.4 percent), security (10.9 percent), and law (10.1 percent). Meanwhile, the top five issues most covered by The Jakarta Post on Prabowo Subianto were about governance (34.5 percent), level of experience in politics (10.1 percent), human rights (10.1 percent), ideology (7.6 percent), and security (7.6 percent).  These issues were also not substantial for Joko Widodo.

The Tone of the Issues Framed for Each Presidential Candidate
The Jakarta Post framed Joko Widodo   (Lo, et al., 1996, p. 44 added that in the election, the voters need more reviews regarding the background of the political candidates and to recognize track records of the candidates will prevent the potential for wrong choice.
Nevertheless, The Jakarta Post did a good job of covering the debate issues of the two presidential candidates during the 2019 presidential campaign. The reports projected that the presidential candidates have their strengths and weakness to be an Indonesian president. Moreover, it is worth noting that the quality of the news coverage toward debate issues of the two presidential candidates, not only the quantity, is also crucial to the presidential candidates. The readers of The Jakarta Post then may rely on its contents helping them to make their electoral decisions.
It is also worth mentioning that studies on media and politics, particularly during elections, suggest that media, for instance The Jakarta Post, play an essential role during the campaign when voters are highly dependent on media to get informed about political candidates. This research contributes to this body of knowledge by investigating an emerging channel, online media. Although traditional media are still being consumed, Indonesia is moving towards digital media. As of 2019, Indonesia VOLUME 17, NOMOR 2, Desember 2020: 233-248 has an internet penetration of 68% (Statista, 2020 It is clear to note that media coverage of presidential candidates is important since it communicates their positions to their readers.
The Jakarta Post covered substantive issues to both candidates. The study revealed a significant difference in the volume of news coverage between the two presidential candidates in terms of neutral framing.
Finally, the results of the research presented in this article suggest that media should be able to fulfil its role in effectively informing citizens about the candidates without bias. Media bias can lead to electoral behaviour since the media, for instance The Jakarta Post has a great potential for influencing their readers.
However, the media has played its role to improve citizens' understanding of presidential candidates.