The Portrayal of Interpersonal Violence in Malaysian Independent Online Media

Malaysians have been shocked with the trending cases of interpersonal violence happened in Malaysia. This interpersonal violence may involves and commits to a person or family members whom they have relationship with. Five components of interpersonal violence is comprising of youth violence, child maltreatment, intimate violence, elder abuse and sexual violence. Unfortunately, it is difficult to make Malaysian society aware of these risks and dangers that may influence the way people behave and act towards each other. In media perspective, the attention to the issue decline when journalists and editors moved on from this reporting this issue. There is a need to supply more information regarding this behaviours to generate attention on this issue. The purpose of conducting a study on this issue is to determine the way Malaysian independent online media portraying interpersonal violence cases. The objectives of this study are to study the media agenda, public agenda and policy agenda used in interpersonal violence reporting in Malaysian independent online news. This study used quantitative content analysis by analysing 140 news articles from two selected independent online news as the sample of this study. Two independent online news used in this study which includes Malaysiakini.com and Free Malaysia Today.com. From this study, media plays an important role as the agenda setter in addressing the criticality of interpersonal violence issues to the Malaysian society. The portrayal of interpersonal violence news is important to shape the pattern of Malaysians in viewing on the seriousness of this matter. This result can be used to plan strategies by increasing the public knowledge on the criticality of interpersonal violence so that public aware of the issue.