News media depictions of people with mental disabilities in Indonesia: A corpus-assisted discourse study


Cite item

Full Text

Abstract

The media plays a pivotal role in shaping public perceptions, often contributing to the reinforcement of stereotypes and the dissemination of misinformation about people with mental disabilities. This article aims to reveal how individuals with mental disabilities have been linguistically and discursively constructed by Indonesian online news media over a ten-year period, from 2011 to 2020. Employing an interdisciplinary approach, the study integrates corpus-assisted discourse studies (CADS) and van Leeuwen’s social actor network framework (van Leeuwen 2008), alongside news media models of disability drawn from Disability Studies. The findings reveal a dominant medicalised framing, portraying people with mental disabilities as patients or sufferers, and also a recurring tendency to link them to crime in sensationalised narratives. These representations are linguistically realised through functionalisations , frequent collocates related to medical terms, and passivation that backgrounds agency, and discursively sustained through role allocations that depict them predominantly as passive patients or as active perpetrators. These portrayals reinforce harmful stereotypes, emphasising danger and deviance, while underrepresenting perspectives that highlight discrimination, stigma, or structural barriers. The analysis suggests that this media coverage is likely to be shaped by commercial imperatives and news values that prioritise profit over progressive reporting. Consequently, narratives aligned with civil rights or social models of disability are marginalised. The persistence of these portrayals contributes to public stigma, limits access to support, and discourages help-seeking behaviour among individuals with mental disorders. The article advocates for more balanced journalism that amplifies real lived experiences, systemic issues, and recovery stories to promote inclusive and equitable representations of mental health in the media.

About the authors

Muchamad Sholakhuddin Al Fajri

Universitas Airlangga

Email: m-sholakhuddin-al-fajri@vokasi.unair.ac.id
ORCID iD: 0000-0002-5628-065X

lecturer at Universitas Airlangga, Indonesia. His research interests include corpus-assisted discourse studies, corpus linguistics and critical discourse studies. He has authored several papers in international journals (Media Asia, Training, Language and Culture, Journal of Language and Education, among others). He is also a member of the Editorial Board of SAGE Open.

Surabaya, Indonesia

Arina Isti’anah

Universitas Sanata Dharma

Author for correspondence.
Email: arina@usd.ac.id
ORCID iD: 0000-0003-4273-1330

Assistant Professor of linguistics at Universitas Sanata Dharma, Indonesia. She is interested in corpus linguistics, critical discourse studies, and ecolinguistics. She has published several articles in international journals Research Results. Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, World of Media, Cogent Arts and Humanities. She also serves as the Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Language and Literature.

Yogyakarta, Indonesia

References

  1. Abwao, Mauryne & Suman Mishra. 2021. Media, culture, and news framing of disability in Kenya’s Daily Nation newspaper. In Michael S. Jeffress (ed.), Disability representation in film, TV, and print media, 235–254. London: Routledge.
  2. Aci, Ozgur Sema, Emre Ciydem, Hulya Bilgin, Zeynep Ozaslan & Seda Tek. 2020. Turkish newspaper articles mentioning people with mental illness: A retrospective study. International Journal of Social Psychiatry 66 (3). 215–224. https://doi.org/10.1177/0020764019894609
  3. Baker, Paul. 2023. Using Corpora in Discourse Analysis, 2nd edn. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.
  4. Baker, Paul & Tony McEnery. 2015. Introduction. In Paul Baker & Tony McEnery (eds.), Corpora and discourse studies: Integrating discourse and corpora, 1–20. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
  5. Baklien, Børge, Marthoenis Marthoenis, Arif Rahman Aceh & Miranda Thurston. 2023. Pasung: A qualitative study of shackling family members with mental illness in Indonesia. Transcultural Psychiatry 60 (3). 566–576. https://doi.org/10.1177/13634615221135254
  6. Balfour, James. 2019. 'The mythological marauding violent schizophrenic': Using the word sketch tool to examine representations of schizophrenic people as violent in the British press. Journal of Corpora and Discourse Studies 2. 40–64. https://doi.org/10.18573/jcads.10
  7. Balfour, James. 2023. Representing Schizophrenia in the Media: A Corpus-Based Approach to UK Press Coverage. New York: Routledge.
  8. Bednarek, Monika. 2020. Invisible or high-risk: Computer-assisted discourse analysis of references to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people(s) and issues in a newspaper corpus about diabetes. PLOS ONE 15 (6). 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0234486
  9. Bilkay, Halil İbrahim, Özge Yaman, Nermin Gürhan & Tülay Yilmaz-Bingöl. 2024. A study on the representation of mental disorders in Turkish newspapers. Journal of Mental Health 33 (2). 185–192. https://doi.org/10.1080/09638237.2023.2245908
  10. Bowen, Mark, Paul Kinderman & Ann Cooke. 2019. Stigma: A linguistic analysis of the UK red-top tabloids press’ representation of schizophrenia. Perspectives in Public Health 139 (3). 147–152. https://doi.org/10.1177/1757913919835858
  11. Bowker, Lynne. 2018. Corpus linguistics is not just for linguists: Considering the potential of computer-based corpus methods for library and information science research. Library Hi Tech 36 (2). 358–371. https://doi.org/10.1108/LHT-12-2017-0271
  12. Brezina, Vaclav, Tony McEnery & Stephen Wattam. 2015. Collocations in context: A new perspective on collocation networks. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 20 (2). 139–173. https://doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.20.2.01bre
  13. Brookes, Gavin & Kevin Harvey. 2016. Examining the discourse of mental illness in a corpus of online advice-seeking messages. In Lucy Pickering, Eric Friginal & Shelley Staples (eds.), Talking at work: Corpus-based explorations of workplace discourse, 209–234. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-49616-4_9
  14. Burr, Vivien. 2015. Social Constructionism, 3rd edn. New York: Routledge.
  15. Clement, Sally, Olga Schauman, Tim Graham, Federica Maggioni, Sara Evans-Lacko, Niks Bezborodovs, Claire Morgan, Nicolas Rüsch, James S. L. Brown & Graham Thornicroft. 2015. What is the impact of mental health-related stigma on help-seeking? A systematic review of quantitative and qualitative studies. Psychological Medicine 45 (1). 11–27. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291714000129
  16. Clogston, John S. 1994. Disability coverage in American newspapers. In Jack Adolph Nelson (ed.), The disabled, the media, and the information age, 45–57. Greenwood Publishing Group.
  17. Corrigan, Patrick W. & Amy C. Watson. 2002. Understanding the impact of stigma on people with mental illness. World Psychiatry 1 (1). 16–20.
  18. Corrigan, Patrick W., Amy C. Watson, Gabriela Gracia, Natalie Slopen, Kenneth Rasinski & Laura L. Hall. 2005. Newspaper stories as measures of structural stigma. Psychiatric Services 56 (5). 551–556. https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ps.56.5.551
  19. Dziurkowska, Ewelina & Marek Wesolowski. 2021. Cortisol as a biomarker of mental disorder severity. Journal of Clinical Medicine 10 (21). 5204. https://doi.org/10.3390/jcm10215204
  20. Goffman, Erving. 1990. Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Penguin Books.
  21. Grandón, Pamela, Dany Fernández Vega, Alejandro Antonio Sánchez Oñate, Alexis Vladimir Vielma Aguilera, Loreto Villagrán Valenzuela, Daisy Vidal Gutiérrez, Carolina Inostroza Rovengno & Rob Whitley. 2022. Mental disorders in the media: A retrospective study of newspaper coverage in the Chilean Press. International Journal of Social Psychiatry 68 (7). 1351–1362. https://doi.org/10.1177/00207640211023086
  22. Grue, Jan. 2016. Disability and Discourse Analysis. New York: Routledge.
  23. Gwarjanski, Anna Rae & Scott Parrott. 2018. Schizophrenia in the news: The role of news frames in shaping online reader dialogue about mental illness. Health Communication 33 (8). 954–961. https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2017.1323320
  24. Haller, Beth. 2000. If they limp, they lead? News representations and the hierarchy of disability images. In Dawn O. Braithwaite & Teresa L. Thompson (eds.), Handbook of communication and people with disabilities: Research and application, 273–288. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
  25. Haller, Beth, Bruce Dorries & Jessica Rahn. 2006. Media labeling versus the US disability community identity: A study of shifting cultural language. Disability & Society 21 (1). 61–75. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687590500375416
  26. Haller, Beth, Chelsea Temple Jones, Vishaya Naidoo, Art Blaser & Lindzey Galliford. 2016. iTechnology as cure or iTechnology as empowerment: What do North American news media report? Disability Studies Quarterly 36 (1). https://doi.org/10.18061/dsq.v36i1.3857
  27. Hartini, Nurul, Nur Ainy Fardana, Atika Dian Ariana & Nido Dipo Wardana. 2018. Stigma toward people with mental health problems in Indonesia. Psychology Research and Behavior Management 11. 535–541. https://doi.org/10.2147/PRBM.S175251
  28. Hunt, Aliza J., Robert Ern-Yuan Guth & Diana Setiyawati. 2023. Evaluating the Indonesia free pasung movement: Understanding continuing use of restraint of the mentally ill in rural Java. Transcultural Psychiatry 60 (3). 552–565. https://doi.org/10.1177/13634615211009626
  29. Ida, Rachmah. 2011. Reorganisation of media power in post-authoritarian Indonesia. In Krishna Sen & David Hill (eds.), Politics and the media in twenty-first century Indonesia: Decade of democracy. New York: Routledge.
  30. Jewkes, Yvonne. 2015. Media and Crime, 3rd edn. London: SAGE.
  31. Karaminis, Themis, Costas Gabrielatos, Ursula Maden-Weinberger & Geoffrey Beattie. 2023. Portrayals of autism in the British press: A corpus-based study. Autism 27 (4). 1092–1114. https://doi.org/10.1177/13623613221131752
  32. Krupchanka, Dzmitry, Daniela Chrtková, Martina Vítková, Daniela Munzel, Michaela Čihařová, Tereza Růžičková, Petr Winkler, Martina Janoušková, Emiliano Albanese & Norman Sartorius. 2018. Experience of stigma and discrimination in families of persons with schizophrenia in the Czech Republic. Social Science & Medicine 212. 129–135. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2018.07.015
  33. Lampropoulos, Dimitrios, Angelika Wolman & Thémis Apostolidis. 2017. Analyzing the presentation and the stigma of schizophrenia in French newspapers. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology 52 (12). 1541–1547. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00127-017-1455-0
  34. Link, Bruce G. & Jo C. Phelan. 2013. Labeling and Stigma. In Carol S. Aneshensel, Jo C. Phelan & Alex Bierman (eds.), Handbook of the sociology of mental health, 525–541. Dordrecht: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4276-5_25
  35. McCrae, Niall, Loujain Sharif & Ian Norman. 2019. Media portrayals of mental disorder in Saudi Arabia: A review of popular newspapers. Transcultural Psychiatry 56 (2). 428–442. https://doi.org/10.1177/1363461518819117
  36. McGinty, Emma E., Howard H. Goldman, Bernice Pescosolido & Colleen L. Barry. 2015. Portraying mental illness and drug addiction as treatable health conditions: Effects of a randomized experiment on stigma and discrimination. Social Science & Medicine 126. 73–85. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2014.12.010
  37. McGinty, Emma E, Alene Kennedy-Hendricks, Seema Choksy & Colleen L. Barry. 2016. Trends in news media coverage of mental illness in the United States: 1995–2014. Health Affairs 35 (6). 1121–1129. https://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2016.0011
  38. Molek-Kozakowska, Katarzyna. 2013. Towards a pragma-linguistic framework for the study of sensationalism in news headlines. Discourse & Communication 7 (2). 173–197. https://doi.org/10.1177/1750481312471668
  39. Nartey, Mark & Isaac N. Mwinlaaru. 2019. Towards a decade of synergising corpus linguistics and critical discourse analysis: A meta-analysis. Corpora 14 (2). 203–235. https://doi.org/10.3366/cor.2019.0169
  40. Nawková, Lucie, Alexander Nawka, Tereza Adámková, Tea Vukušić Rukavina, Petra Holcnerová, Martina Rojnić Kuzman, Nikolina Jovanović, Ognjen Brborović, Bibiána Bednárová & Svetlana Žuchová. 2012. The picture of mental health/illness in the printed media in three central European countries. Journal of Health Communication 17 (1). 22–40. https://doi.org/10.1080/10810730.2011.571341
  41. Nugent, Christopher, Michael Rosato, Lynette Hughes & Gerry Leavey. 2021. Risk factors associated with experienced stigma among people diagnosed with mental ill-health: A cross-sectional study. Psychiatric Quarterly 92 (2). 633–643. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11126-020-09827-1
  42. Østerud, Kaja Larsen. 2023. Mental illness stigma and employer evaluation in hiring: Stereotypes, discrimination and the role of experience. Sociology of Health & Illness 45 (1). 90–108. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9566.13544
  43. Paul, Sayani. 2018. Are we doing enough? Stigma, discrimination and human rights violations of people living with schizophrenia in India: Implications for social work practice. Social Work in Mental Health 16 (2). 145–171. https://doi.org/10.1080/15332985.2017.1361887
  44. Parrish-Sprowl, John. 2015. Intercultural communication and disabilities from a communication complex perspective. Russian Journal of Linguistics 19 (4). 101–110.
  45. Potts, Amanda, Monika A Bednarek & Annmaree Watharow. 2023. Super, social, medical: Person-first and identity-first representations of disabled people in Australian newspapers, 2000–2019. Discourse & Society 34 (4). 405–428. https://doi.org/10.1177/09579265231156504
  46. Pratiwi, Ni Made Sintha, Lilik Zuhriyah & Lilik Supriati. 2018. Exposure to mass media as a dominant factor influencing public stigma toward mental illness based on sunrise model approach. Belitung Nursing Journal 4 (2). 232–241. https://doi.org/10.33546/bnj.372
  47. Price, Hazel. 2022. The Language of Mental Illness: Corpus Linguistics and the Construction of Mental Illness in the Press. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  48. Rodrigues-Silva, Nuno, Telma Falcão de Almeida, Filipa Araújo, Andrew Molodynski, Ângela Venâncio & Jorge Bouça. 2017. Use of the word schizophrenia in Portuguese newspapers. Journal of Mental Health 26 (5). 426–430. https://doi.org/10.1080/09638237.2016.1207231
  49. Sickel, Amy E., Jason D. Seacat & Nina A. Nabors. 2016. Mental health stigma: Impact on mental health treatment attitudes and physical health. Journal of Health Psychology 24 (5). 586–599. https://doi.org/10.1177/1359105316681430
  50. Sittner, Madeleine, Theresa Rechenberg, Sina Speerforck, Matthias C. Angermeyer & Georg Schomerus. 2024. ‘Broken souls’ vs. ‘mad ax man’ – changes in the portrayal of depression and schizophrenia in the German media over 10 years. Epidemiology and Psychiatric Sciences 33. e37. https://doi.org/10.1017/S204579602400043X
  51. Stubbs, Michael. 1996. Text and Corpus Analysis : Computer-assisted Studies of Language and Culture. London: Blackwell.
  52. Sukmayadi, Vidi. 2019. The dynamics of media landscape and media policy in Indonesia. Asia Pacific Media Educator 29 (1). 58–67. https://doi.org/10.1177/1326365X19844853
  53. van Leeuwen, Theo. 1996. The representation of social actors. In Carmen Rosa Caldas-Coulthard & Malcolm Coulthard (eds.), Texts and practices: Readings in critical discourse analysis, 32–70. London: Routledge.
  54. van Leeuwen, Theo. 2008. Discourse and Practice: New Tools for Critical Discourse Analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  55. Wahl, Otto E., Amy Wood & Renee Richards. 2002. Newspaper coverage of mental Illness: Is it changing?. Psychiatric Rehabilitation Skills 6 (1). 9–31. https://doi.org/10.1080/10973430208408417
  56. Whitley, Rob, Ademola Adeponle & Anna Rose Miller. 2015. Comparing gendered and generic representations of mental illness in Canadian newspapers: An exploration of the chivalry hypothesis. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology 50. 325–333. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00127-014-0902-4
  57. Whitley, Rob & Sarah Berry. 2013. Trends in newspaper coverage of mental illness in Canada: 2005–2010. The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 58 (2). 107–112. https://doi.org/10.1177/070674371305800208
  58. Zappettini, Franco, Douglas M. Ponton & Tatiana V. Larina. 2021. Emotionalisation of contemporary media discourse: A research agenda. Russian Journal of Linguistics 25 (3). 586–610. https://doi.org/10.22363/2687-0088-2021-25-3-586-610
  59. Zilberstein, Tanya & Baruch Shomron. 2024. The depiction of people with schizophrenia in news media: A cross-national analysis. Schizophrenia Research 274. 171–177. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.schres.2024.09.016

Supplementary files

Supplementary Files
Action
1. JATS XML
Download

Copyright (c) 2025 Al Fajri M.S., Isti’anah A.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Согласие на обработку персональных данных с помощью сервиса «Яндекс.Метрика»

1. Я (далее – «Пользователь» или «Субъект персональных данных»), осуществляя использование сайта https://journals.rcsi.science/ (далее – «Сайт»), подтверждая свою полную дееспособность даю согласие на обработку персональных данных с использованием средств автоматизации Оператору - федеральному государственному бюджетному учреждению «Российский центр научной информации» (РЦНИ), далее – «Оператор», расположенному по адресу: 119991, г. Москва, Ленинский просп., д.32А, со следующими условиями.

2. Категории обрабатываемых данных: файлы «cookies» (куки-файлы). Файлы «cookie» – это небольшой текстовый файл, который веб-сервер может хранить в браузере Пользователя. Данные файлы веб-сервер загружает на устройство Пользователя при посещении им Сайта. При каждом следующем посещении Пользователем Сайта «cookie» файлы отправляются на Сайт Оператора. Данные файлы позволяют Сайту распознавать устройство Пользователя. Содержимое такого файла может как относиться, так и не относиться к персональным данным, в зависимости от того, содержит ли такой файл персональные данные или содержит обезличенные технические данные.

3. Цель обработки персональных данных: анализ пользовательской активности с помощью сервиса «Яндекс.Метрика».

4. Категории субъектов персональных данных: все Пользователи Сайта, которые дали согласие на обработку файлов «cookie».

5. Способы обработки: сбор, запись, систематизация, накопление, хранение, уточнение (обновление, изменение), извлечение, использование, передача (доступ, предоставление), блокирование, удаление, уничтожение персональных данных.

6. Срок обработки и хранения: до получения от Субъекта персональных данных требования о прекращении обработки/отзыва согласия.

7. Способ отзыва: заявление об отзыве в письменном виде путём его направления на адрес электронной почты Оператора: info@rcsi.science или путем письменного обращения по юридическому адресу: 119991, г. Москва, Ленинский просп., д.32А

8. Субъект персональных данных вправе запретить своему оборудованию прием этих данных или ограничить прием этих данных. При отказе от получения таких данных или при ограничении приема данных некоторые функции Сайта могут работать некорректно. Субъект персональных данных обязуется сам настроить свое оборудование таким способом, чтобы оно обеспечивало адекватный его желаниям режим работы и уровень защиты данных файлов «cookie», Оператор не предоставляет технологических и правовых консультаций на темы подобного характера.

9. Порядок уничтожения персональных данных при достижении цели их обработки или при наступлении иных законных оснований определяется Оператором в соответствии с законодательством Российской Федерации.

10. Я согласен/согласна квалифицировать в качестве своей простой электронной подписи под настоящим Согласием и под Политикой обработки персональных данных выполнение мною следующего действия на сайте: https://journals.rcsi.science/ нажатие мною на интерфейсе с текстом: «Сайт использует сервис «Яндекс.Метрика» (который использует файлы «cookie») на элемент с текстом «Принять и продолжить».