https://jurnal.ugm.ac.id/jurnal-humaniora HUMANIORA Vol. 32, No. 2 (June 2020) Image Construction of Islamic Defenders Front in the Jakarta Post Online News Siti Nurul Hidayah State University of Jakarta, Indonesia Email: nurulhidayah467@gmail.com ABSTRACT This study aimed to observe image construction of the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) based on six articles of the Jakarta Post Online News about the FPI’s protest toward three issues: Ahmadiyah, the arrival of Lady Gaga in Indonesia, and Ahok as the substitute governor of Jakarta. The author qualitatively explored the FPI’s image using Halliday’s systemic functional linguistics (SFL), which defnes the types of process in a clause. The author also analyzed the thematic structure of the clause to support the analysis of each type of process. The result was approximately 208 clauses from the six news articles. This study shows that the dominant process in the above- mentioned three issues is the material process. The material process represents 51% in the issue of Ahmadiyah, 41% in the issue of the arrival of Lady Gaga, and 70% in the issue of Ahok as Jakarta’s substitute governor. This material process shows that the Jakarta Post Online News constructed a negative image of the FPI’s by reporting this organization’s action during the protest. In the issue of Ahmadiyah, the FPI was framed as anarchist, while in the issue of Ahok and of Lady Gaga it was represented as protestor. The analysis of thematic structures shows the FPI as the dominant topical theme, which indicates the FPI was the main topic of the articles. Keywords: news article; Systemic Functional Linguistics; image construction of the FPI; thematic structure; types of process INTRODUCTION Since when the Indonesian government applied the reformation, in the middle of 1998, the wriggle of media has developed. The deliberacy of mass media has supported journalists to argue and share their idea. This development is hardly tied with the regulation and the improvement of the government’s politics. The improvement of the government system has created euphoria in mass media, especially to some power possessor. Mass media are a cultural industry that produces and distributes songs, novels, newspapers, and other cultural products to a large number of people (Campbell, 2012). In shaping culture, mass media use many strategies with reinforcing images and representation of something. Mass media play a role not only as the source of information, but also as the stick holder of shaping culture and democracy (Campbell, 2005). Thus, they can be a vehicle to infuence public opinion and raise awareness towards issues. Moreover, this infuence can shape the audience’s mindset towards some cases. Newspapers are still considered as the best mass media in delivering news. Beside news, they can be used as the source of daily activities; newspapers give the readers both information and entertainment. They also help the readers to make a choice, such as the preference of food or leaders to elect (Campbell, 2012, p. 221). Newspapers are of two kinds: Ordinary printed daily news and its online version. Terrorism has high value in the news in Indonesia, hence the perpetrators use religion to legitimate their acts. As a country which consists of 85.2% of Muslims, https://doi.org/10.22146/jh.v32i2.37626 page 163—169