Prevalent news frames in news reports about military operations against Boko Haram in North-East Nigeria
The media have been accused of bias against the military by framing Boko Haram group as being superior thereby making better-armed soldiers afraid of confronting the group in open battle. This accusation was without any empirical underpinning, thus this study objectives were to identify the framing...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Lomonosov Moscow State University. Faculty of Journalism
2020-05-01
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| Series: | World of Media |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://worldofmedia.ru/volumes/2020/2020_Issue_1/World%20of%20Media_1-2020-51-72.pdf |
| Summary: | The media have been accused of bias against the military by framing Boko Haram group as being superior thereby making better-armed soldiers afraid of confronting the group in open battle. This accusation was without any empirical underpinning, thus this study objectives were to identify the framing patterns used by Nigerian newspapers in the coverage of military operations against the Boko Haram group in North-East Nigeria. Four national dailies, Daily Trust, Premium Times, The Nation and Vanguard, were analyzed to find out the framing patterns in the reportage of military operations against Boko Haram to ascertain if the frames were more pro-military or anti-military. Hinged on the framing theory, the research method was content analysis. Inter-coder reliability was tested using the co-efficient of reliability suggested by Chadwick et al. (1984). Findings showed that the Injured/Arrest/Capture/Death of Boko Haram members frame was predominant across three newspapers (Daily Trust, Premium Times, The Nation) which made up 22% of the frames while Vanguard emphasized Cooperation frame with 11% of the total frames. Results also indicated that there was a 24% prevalence of the 17 frame categories used in the study. This shows that Nigerian newspapers reported the military favorably with 80% of the frames. Overall, findings do not support the statement that the media are to be blamed for the shortcomings of the military in the fight against the insurgents. Other factors like corruption, non-motivation of personnel amongst a host of others should be investigated. |
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| ISSN: | 2307-1605 2686-8016 |