MEDIATING PEACE IN CONFLICT REPORTING: NEWSPAPER COVERAGE AND FRAMING OF CONFLICTS IN SOUTH-EAST AND SOUTH-SOUTH NIGERIA

SOURCE:

Faculty: Social Sciences
Department: Mass Communication

CONTRIBUTORS:

Ugbo, G.O;
Dunu, I.V;

ABSTRACT:

This study aimed at examining how selected Nigerian national daily newspapers have adopted and applied peace journalism principles in reporting Nigerian conflicts using the two conflict situations in South-East and South-South Nigeria – the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and Niger Delta Avengers (NDA) conflicts – as the focus. Specifically, it sought to determine: journalists’ level of knowledge of peace journalism principles; the frequency of coverage; the framing of the conflict stories; and factors that affect journalists’ adoption and application of the principles. The study was anchored on Framing, Social Responsibilities and Conflict theories. Mixed research methodologies – survey and content analysis –, were employed for the study. Five hundred and eighty two (582) journalists were sampled in the survey, while 168 editions of four selected newspapers – The Sun, The Punch, Daily Trust and The Guardian newspapers – were content analyzed from 2014 to 2016 using a census and simple random sampling techniques respectively to determine how news stories around IPOB and NDA conflicts were covered and framed within the lens of peace journalism. The data were analysed using simple percentage through SPSS and presented in tables and pie charts. Findings from the study showed clear ambivalence between respondents’ claimed pattern of conflict reporting and the actual manifest reports in the sampled newspapers. The conflicts news as reported by the Journalists yielded a war journalism result. The IPOB and NDA conflicts received the least attention of all other conflicts reported in the sampled newspapers. The findings by implication, brought to the foreground the disconnect between knowledge of peace journalism principles and the pragmatic translation of same in every day journalism practice among the journalists in South-East and South-South Nigeria. The study concluded that peace journalism paradigm has not yet been adopted by the sampled journalists as the new principle in reporting conflicts that could help in the de-escalation and general conflict management. It was therefore, recommended that journalists should be trained and retrained in this new approach to conflict reporting. Again, this new paradigm should be introduced in the Nigerian Universities’ Mass Communication curriculum to further enhance the training of student journalists.