Abstract
Crisis is well known with Coomb’s definition, which mean, uncertainty, resulting negative impact to the organization, state or country. Lahad Datu crisis, also known as “Sabah standoff” crisis, is an unforgettable tragedy until killed about 10 of Malaysian security personnel and impacted economic, social and emotion of citizens especially at Lahad Datu, Sabah. The objectives of this research is to identify the appropriate crisis responses through newspaper framing by government. With the assistance of “Framing Analysis” and “Situational Crisis Communication Theory”, this research employed a systematic quantitative content analysis to gather the data. In analyzing the data, researcher used descriptive and empirical analysis through Chi Square and Kruskall Wallis test. Overall from 466 news articles, this study found out news sources from government were portrayed most by all the dailies. Data also shown that the “Lahad Datu” crisis news were slanted in positive slant and portrayal of solution category of news appeared most in all the selected dailies. However, in portraying the visuals, data depicted a significant differences in portrayal of pictures whereby The Star, Nanban daily and Sin Chew portrayed most of the relevant visuals such as militants and soldiers visuals compare to Utusan Malaysia. In examining the crisis response strategies, all the dailies portrayed most on justification crisis response followed by concern crisis response. In providing justification and concern response, Kruskal Wallis test revealed that, there is a significant difference among the dailies; The Star and Utusan Malaysia portrayed most of the justification and concern responses compare to Sin Chew and Nanban daily.