ANALISIS SUBJEKTIFITAS MEDIA DARING JEPANG MENGENAI ISU LARANGAN KELUAR MASUK JEPANG PADA MASA PANDEMI VIRUS COVID-19: SEBUAH PENELITIAN SEMIOTIK

The polarization between conservative and progressive media created a middle ground for the print media to maintain sufficient readerships which are decreasing due to the declining Japanese birth rate. But why it relates to ‘security’, what is the reason? This research aims to examine news articles from the Yomiuri Shimbun and Asahi Shimbun mass media in English, namely, The Japan News and The Asahi Shimbun, as a reference medium to understand the framing between conservative and progressive Japanese mass media regarding the issue of prohibiting entry and exit of Japan for the international community during the pandemic. Researchers used qualitative methods, content analysis, with a semiotics approach in which researcher used the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) software to filter out low-frequency nouns with a number> 5 which became the key vocabulary to understand the debate on the prohibition of entry an­d leaving Japan during January- August 2020. No less than 19 news articles were collected from The Japan News and 21 news articles were collected from The Asahi Shimbun by searching for the terms Ban/ Re-entry/ Travel/ Entry. After being filtered, 22 nouns >5 were found which were used by The Japan News and The Asahi Shimbun. In addition, there are 5 nouns found only in one medium with a total of >5. The result shows that The Japan News is a pro-government media that rarely criticizes the government. Criticism will be made if government policies disrupt the economy and are related to the Keidanren (Japan Business Association). On the other hand, The Asahi Shimbun is a counter-government media that criticize the government but has close ties to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. To understand the Japanese mass media information data strategically, both mass media have an important role in the international community.