This study analyzed 50 news stories from online news portal linked to social media. It aimed to identify common linguistic features found in these news stories and the social impact these news stories to the general public. On one aspect of three-dimensional framework of Fairclough (1995) on Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), which is on the linguistic description of the formal properties of language, it was established that use of numbers, labeling, lexical choices and SV Grammatical Process Type are the common linguistic features of corpora. On the dimensions of interpretation of the relationship between the discursive processes/interaction and the text and of explanation of the relationship between discourse and social and cultural, this study revealed four social impacts of these news stories to the general public. First, people had become assertive of their views about war on drugs. Second, people had developed critical regards to the news media. Third, people had developed social stigma towards the Chinese nationals. Lastly, the news stories about war on drugs had raised awareness of the public about the extent of drug problem of the country. Given the analysis of the data, news stories production and consumption had become a dynamic and active activity between media and audiences. The media’s portrayal of the social issue on the war on drugs had met various reactions from people and prompted them to react to the news. It challenged the traditional notion that languages in news were biased-free and neutral, claiming that the latter were branded by certain values and ideology. Evidently, comments and reactions were audiences’ forms of cyber-activism. Clearly, news language is a discourse in itself, and as such deserves to be explored.
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