The Language of Online News Headline: Discoursing the Marawi Crisis

Abstract

This study explores the language of three hundred thirteen headlines of the Marawi crisis from the online news platform of Philippine Daily Inquirer (PDI) and MindaNews. The primary objective is to analyze the different frames of reporting the siege of Marawi in 2017. Lexical choices are listed to analyze the news coverage of the crisis and the actors’ involvement in terms of word associations and voice of the verbs. Findings show twelve (12) frames of the events, namely, death and violence, defense forces, humanitarian, education, Marawi community, military, Maute, normalcy and safety, political and clerics, revolutionists, and war. The lexical choices of PDI describe dominant actors in the active voice whilst MindaNews’ actors are in the passive voice. The PDI is informative through an objective-based and evidence-based reporting, with a fraction of provocative and emotive attitudes but not exaggerating the portrayal of the actors. On the other hand, MindaNews reveals its localness through the underlying provocative words they use to associate their actors. Although both news agencies are less speculative, they generally keep track of an informative attitude on news reporting the event with the presence of their differing biases.