FIGHT AMONG POLITICAL ACTORS ON PRINTED MEDIA  

AS PART OF GENERAL ELECTION   

HELD TO VOTE FOR REGENT OF BANGLI REGENCY IN 2010 

 

Ni Made Ras Amanda Gelgel 

Faculty of Social and Political Sciences 

Udayana University 

email: rasamanda13@gmail.com 

 

ABSTRACT 

 In the era of after reformation, Indonesia has developed rapidly enough in 

political sector and mass media freedom. In the local level such as in Bangli Regency, 

Bali Province, the fight among political actors on the printed mass media took place 

when the general election to vote for the regent was held. The general election which was 

held to vote for the regent was full of dynamism in which the candidates fought against 

one another on the longer mass media. The problems of the present study are as follows: 

(1) what was the fight among political actors on the printed media when the general 

election was held to vote the regent of Bangli Regency in 2010 like?; (2) the factors 

leading to it?; and (3) what was the impact and meaning of the fight among the political 

actors on the printed media? The theories used in the present study were the theory of 

discourse of relation of knowledge and power, the theory of the impact of media such as 

the agenda setting, the theory of framing, the theory of media text analysis, the theory of 

hegemony, and the theory of capital. The research method used was the qualitative 

approach with critical paradigm.  

The forms of the fight among political actors took place in the arenas of news 

articles, advertorials, advertisements, and paid articles. The fight taking place in these 

arenas started from the fight for the self-image of the actors to the political issue. The 

factors leading to it was political factor, economic factor, and mass media. The fight 

among the political actors affected political sector, economic sector, and cultural sector. 

The fight among the political actors on the printed media contained pragmatic meaning of 

the media and political actors, the image, popular life style, and change of political 

culture in Bangli.  

 

Keywords: printed media, politics, general election, political communication, political 

actors.  

 
 

 

 

 

 

mailto:rasamanda13@gmail.com


INTRODUCTION  

 In the era of after reformation, every sector of life changed and developed in 

Indonesia in general and political sector and freedom of mass media in particular. These 

two sectors developed and met each other within the context of political communication 

through mass media. The fight among the political actors when the general elections were 

held to vote for the national and local leaders took place in the national and local levels. 

In Bali such a fight also took place.  The data prepared by Kompas showed that in Bali 

there were more deviations than those in the other parts of Indonesia. Media were 

assumed to play an important role in transmitting and stimulating political problems 

(Negrine, 1996). The openness and freedom in expressing opinions had been a global 

trend; the political fraud was easily adopted as the national issue by the media 

(Firmanzah, 2007: 45).  

 In the present study, the general election held to vote for the regent in Bangli in 

2010 was chosen as the object of the study for several reasons. The first reason was that 

there were many candidates; the second reason was that there were conflicts before, after 

and when the general election was held to vote for the regent in Bangli; the third reason 

was that reelection was held at several voting places; and the last reason was that the time 

during which the fight among the political actors took place became extended. The 

general election held to vote for the regent in Bali were attended by five pairs of 

candidates of the regent and deputy regent. This showed that there was a high political 

participation. Therefore, it was interesting to further explore what was the fight among 

the political actors on the printed media in relation to the general election held to vote for 

the regent of Bangli Regency in 2010 like; what factors contributing to the fight among 

the political actors and what were the impact and meaning of the fight among the political 

actors on the printed media in relation to the general election held to vote for the regent 

of Bangli Regency in 2010. Theoretically, this present study would enrich the cultural 

studies in general and political communication and the use of printed media in particular. 

Practically, this present study would help overcome and avoid the conflicts frequently 

taking place in relation to practical politics.  

 The theories used in the present study were the theory of discourse of relation of 

knowledge and power proposed by Foucault, the theory of the impact of media such as 



the theory of Agenda Setting proposed by Dominic, the theory of framing, the theory of 

media text analysis proposed by Shoemaker and Reese, the theory of Hegemony 

proposed by Antonio Gramsci, and the theory of Capital proposed by Blourdieu. They 

were used eclectically and helped one another in analyzing the problems. 

 

RESEARCH METHOD 

 The method used in the present study was the qualitative approach with a critical 

paradigm. Based on the theories and literature review, the object of the present study is 

the fight among the political actors on the printed media when the general election was 

held to vote for the regent of Bangli Regency in 2010. Therefore, the research method 

used was the method of critical discourse analysis with framing analysis. The instrument 

used was an interview guide. The data were collected using the technique of in-depth 

interview and documentary study. The in-depth interview was intended to obtain wide 

information from the key informants. 

 

RESULT AND DISCUSSION 

 The fight among the political actors on the printed media in relation to the general 

election held to vote for the regent of Bangli Regency in 2010 can be described as 

follows. First, the arena in the printed media where the fight among the political actors 

took place could be divided into four forms. The political actors fought through the 

discourse of political issues and image. As stated by Bourdieu (in Ritzer, 2004: 252) that 

every candidate used discourses as one of the arenas to acquire power.  

 The forms of the fight among the political actors on the printed media could be 

divided into four; they are news articles, paid news articles, advertorial articles, and 

advertisements. Each area had its advantages and disadvantages. The news articles tended 

to be used as the arena where the political actors argued about the political issues, and the 

political actors who were involved in it were the pair of candidates IB Brahmaputra – 

Wayan Winurjaya (Brahmawijaya) and the pair of candidates I Made Gianyar – Sedana 

Artha (GITA). They argued that the general election should be repeated. Brahmawijaya 

showed that there were many indicators of deviations when the general election was held. 

However, such an issue was opposed by GITA who claimed that Brahmawijaya 



intimidated the Panwaslu (the Supervisory Committee of General Election) and KPUD 

(the Local Committee of General Election) Bangli.  

 Advertisement was one of the other forms, which was used by the pair of 

candidates GITA. They showed the issue that they affiliated with PDIP. In addition, they 

claimed that they were cultured and highly educated. The political issue adopted through 

the advertisement was making Bali Shanti (Bali Peaceful) and voting from the heart.  

 Advertorial was the next form, which was used by the pair of candidates Wayan 

Arsada-Lasmawan (ALAS). Advertorial was used by ALAS to construct self image and 

their political programs. In the local people’s opinion, they constructed the image that 

they were educated, highly appreciated the Balinese culture, close to the former regent of 

Bangli, Arnawa. In addition, they also constructed the image that they were simple and 

popular among the local people. ALAS constructed hegemony through advertorial. 

Gramsci stated that power should be understood as relation. ALAS was able to dominate 

the information transmitted to the subordinate classes so they accepted the ideas and 

political interests of the ruling group through advertorial.  

 The next form was that the fight among the political actors took place through 

paid news articles, which were mostly used by the pair of candidates Brahmawijaya as a 

means of their political communication. They also constructed their positive image 

through paid news articles. 

 From the forms of the fight among the political actors described above, the factors 

contributing to the fight among the political actors could be identified. There were three 

dominant factors which contributed to the general election held to vote for the regent of 

Bangli Regency in 2010. They are economic factor, political factor, and mass media. The 

economic strength or capital was recorded as the most dominant factor leading to the 

fight among the political actors on the printed media. The paid news caused the costs 

needed by the political actors to communicate their political programs on the mass media 

to be high. At this point, the printed media were frequently motivated to obtain more 

benefit, meaning that the power of the market or the interests of the capitalist dominated 

the fight among the political actors on the mass media.  

 The political factor which contributed to the fight among the political actors was 

the political ideology of the pairs of candidates and their political parties and 



communication strategies. Every pair of candidate had different capital. The capital 

strength became the consideration of the political strategy used by the political actors. 

The fight over the combination of capitals which was stated by Bourdieu in Richardson 

(1986) took place when the general election was held to vote for the regent of Bangli 

Regency in 2010. The capital which changed its form also took place when the general 

election to vote for the regent of Bangli Regency was held. Among the three capitals 

stated by Bourdieu (1986), the economic capital mostly affected the fight among the 

political actors on the printed media. In other words, the economic capital dominated the 

social and cultural capitals.  

 The next factor contributing to the fight among the political actors was the media 

themselves.  The media could be divided into two; they are the media staff and the media 

ideology. Shoemaker and Reese (1996: 76) stated that personal values would determine 

how a journalist made news. The interaction in which the political actor and media used 

each other was a common thing when a general election was held. Such an interaction 

had already been a routine when the campaign was held for a general election, including 

the general election which was held to vote for the regent of Bangli Regency. The media 

routines which would charge expensively for news, advertorials and political 

advertisements could not be separated from the media’s sources of funds.  

 The fight among the political actors could not be separated from every societal 

aspect. Such a fight widely affected and was meaningful not only to the political sector 

only. The fight among the political actors on the printed media also affected the 

economic sector and cultural sector. It also affected the system of political 

communication which used the printed magazine as a form of communication between 

the political actors and their constituents.  

 Its impact on the economic sector was that the general election was used as a 

means of obtaining as much benefit as possible. The media prepared space for the 

political actors to campaign their political programs. The space could be in the forms of 

advertisements and advertorials. In practice, it turned out that when the general election 

was held to vote for the regent of Bangli Regency in 2010, the media prepared other 

spaces for the political actors such as paid news or popularly termed as the trading of 

news plotting. The price of one plot was different from that of another plot, depending on 



the number of pages and the column length. The price ranged from Rp. 10 million to 16 

million for every publication.  

 

CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION 

 The increase in the use of the printed media as the arena where the political actors 

fought against one another depended on the economic strength of the political actors. The 

reason was that the fight among the political actors when the general election was held to 

vote for the regent of Bangli Regency cost a lot. The political cost which was high 

enough was made higher by the cost needed to use the media to communicate the 

political messages of the political actors. Politically, this contributed to the high cost 

politics, which economically affected the political actors and the printed media. The 

political actors were expected to have sufficient capital; otherwise, they could not fight 

against one another. The hegemony of the economic strength in the fight among the 

political actors when the general election was held to vote for the regent of Bangli 

Regency on the printed media could dominate the knowledge which was developing in 

the community. According to Foucault, power is closely related to knowledge. 

Knowledge supports power, and power supports knowledge (Foucault, 1980: 98). 

Therefore, if the media cooperated with the political actors for the sake of economic and 

political interests, then the readers and constituents would be the final expectation. It was 

expected that the constituents would be the active and critical readers. They were 

expected to be able to choose and read that there were practical and pragmatic interests of 

the political actors in every article issued on the media. This was necessarily done in 

order to avoid the media from making the readers get ignorant through the subjective and 

dependent news. 

 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT 

 In this opportunity, the writer would like to thank the three supervisors: Prof. Dr. I 

Gde Parimartha, MA, Prof. Dr. I Wayan Ardika, MA, Prof. Dr. I Nyoman Darma Putra, 

M.Litt. Thanks are also expressed to all the staff of the Doctorate Program of Cultural 

Studies, School of Postgraduate Studies, Udayana University.  

 



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