Abstract

The emergence of Internet as the ‘fifth estate’ with the introduction of new media has changed the landscape of political communication. The media audiences connect through the Internet in obtaining the information are in the midst of transition from relying on the traditional mainstream media to the alternative media, especially on the political news contents. The engagement with these political media contents stimulate the psychological emotion of the media audiences. The paper’s main objective is to understand students’ psychological emotion based on the political news media contents framed by the ‘independent’ News Portals. The political media contents were selected based on the salience of news highlighted in the new media for the months of November and December 2019. The participants for the studies were divided into TWO (2) Focus Group sessions, comprising eight (8) participants in each session. Eleven (11) selected specimens – political media contents framed in the various independent News Portals were vetted by the experts to be used in the evaluation procedures for the studies. The studies used the International Positive Negative Affective Schedule Short Form (I-PANAS- SF) as the references for the participants to express their psychological emotions triggered from the selected specimens. From the evaluation, a new 69-items Emotion Words (EWs) were compiled, consisting of both positive and negative EWs. Based on the analysis of findings from the Repertory Grid (RepGrid) Form filled by the sixteen (16) participants, the study managed to capture five ‘constructs’: confusing historical facts, leadership credibility of the politicians, knowledge to handle sensitive issues, appreciation on War History and accurate historical facts that triggered the psychological emotion of these participants. Subsequently, from the specific objectives, the studies managed to develop TWO additional new outcomes, (i) The Affective Lexicon and (ii) RepGrid Form based on the political media contents framed in the new media. All the data were managed in the ATLAS.ti Software. Finally, the findings from the study are recommended to be applied for the future studies as a basis for better understanding of the psychological warfare in the new media that triggers human emotions in politics.