ssessment of the Guardian Newspaper Reportage of Coronavirus between February 2020 and January 2021
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Date
2022-12
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Lead City University
Abstract
The concerns brought about by the outbreak of Covid-19 all over the world in the year 2020 was so dramatic as it was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organisation. The need to look into news reports of the virus also became a concern to researchers in the field of mass communication hence this study assessed Guardian newspaper reportage of coronavirus in Nigeria between 28th February 2020 and 27th January 2021. The study adopted the Framing theory, the Social Responsibility theory, and the agenda-setting theory as its theoretical framework. The quantitative research design was adopted with the content analysis approach used in examining the manifest contents of the Guardian Newspaper in addressing the research objectives. Findings show that the Guardian newspaper used Fear/Death frame 125 (34.1%) between 27th February 2020 and 28th January 2021 more frequently. The study also found that the newspaper showed a high level of prominence in reporting the Coronavirus stories as it published more of front page and back page stories. It also had more of hard news stories. The study recommends among others that as the fourth estate of the realm and the watchdog of the society, journalists should constantly cover and report cases of Coronavirus to inform and educate the society on the dangers of its spread in Nigeria. Also, journalists should constantly address the issue of professional ethics stipulated by the Code of Ethics for Nigerian journalists under the Nigerian Press Council in covering and reporting Coronavirus as this would help ensure accurate and fairness in their reportage.
Keyword: newspaper reportage, reportage frequency, reportage prominence, coronavirus, guardian newspaper
Word Count: 256 words
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Kate Turabian