Media, Integrity, And Political Reputation: A Framing Analysis Of Pks’s Image Construction Following The 2026 Political Party Integrity Index

Deddy Rahman, Ahmad Badari Burhan

Abstract


The announcement of Indonesia’s Political Party Integrity Index (Indeks Integritas Partai Politik/IIPP) 2026, which ranked the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) as the most integrity-driven party with a score of 71—well above the national average of 61.2—presents a scientifically compelling paradox: at the same time, PKS’s electoral support remained stagnant at approximately 5.9 percent. This gap raises a critical question about how national media frames this institutional achievement and which dominant frames construct PKS’s political reputation in the public sphere. This study aims to analyze the media framing construction of PKS following the IIPP 2026 announcement across eight national media outlets over a three-month period (February 11–May 11, 2026). Employing a qualitative approach with Entman’s [5] framing analysis model—encompassing problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and treatment recommendation—the study analyzes 40 news articles from Kompas.com, Tempo.co, Media Indonesia, Republika, Detik.com, ANTARA, JPNN, and CNN Indonesia. Findings reveal the emergence of four dominant frames: institutional legitimacy frame (45%), electoral paradox frame (30%), political instrumentalization frame (15%), and systemic critique frame (10%), with significantly varied distributions across media outlets consistent with their respective editorial orientations. PKS’s reputation construction operates through three mechanisms: symbolic capital amplification, legitimacy contestation, and comparative contextualization. The study concludes that external integrity validation does not automatically generate a homogeneous reputation; media framing logic serves as an active and non-neutral mediator in the image construction process of political parties. These findings contribute to the development of framing theory in Indonesian political communication, particularly regarding the relationships among institutional integrity, mediatization, and party reputation management.

Keywords


framing analysis, IIPP, image construction, mediatization, political communication, political party reputation

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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.52155/ijpsat.v58.2.8483

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