THE ROLE OF THE MASS MEDIA IN THE 2017 GUBERNATORIAL ELECTION OF JAKARTA

Purpose of Study: The media have an important role in the introducing process of candidates of local leaders. Various opinions on the candidates may be formed and spread to the public through the media. The media are able to organize realities from various events occurred so that they become the discourse that supports or rejects the candidates. Methodology: The media’s construction of the candidates is determined by three main factors, namely the media’s par- tiality towards capitalism/capital owners; quasi-support for the public and support for the public interests. The relation between the media and capital owners may make the news report of the media unbalance and tend to be on the side of certain candidates. The news narrative, the terms used, and the resource persons invited are adjusted to the interests of the media to make certain candidates win. Results: The media wars occur in every election for local leaders. One of the elections for local leaders that involved the media war is the Jakarta Election 2017. The media war occurred not only in offline such as printed matter media and online media but also in social media like Facebook and Twitter. Social media were filled with the issue about diversity against obedience to religion which was followed by some hate speech, hoax news, and insults from those who were not of the same opinion. Through this discourse, the political image of the candidate was constructed