Nigeria Newspapers Framing of Boko Haram Insurgency

Abstract

Since 2009, when Boko Haram thrust itself into global consciousness, it has attracted the attention of the media and media (and other) researchers. Given the crucial role that the media play in the society, especially in times of conflict, this paper examines how Nigerian newspapers have covered the Boko Haram insurgency by looking at the contexts and angles used by the newspapers in reporting the sect with a view to determining if they have contributed to the solution of the Boko Haram insurgency. The paper used framing theory as its theoretical background, and content analysis as its methodology. Six frames were designed for the study; the frames served as content categories. They are responsibility, conflict, human interest, political, economic consequences and religious frames. The unit of analysis was the news article. Using purposive sampling; four newspapers served as study population- two in the north of Nigeria and two in the south. They are Daily Trust and Leadership; and The Nation and The Vanguard in the north and south respectively. Period covered by the study is two years, January 2014 to December 2015, being the peak of Boko Haram activities. Constructed week sampling technique was applied to choose the newspapers’ content-analyzed. The number of articles analyzed was 3,360. Responsibility was the dominant frame adopted by the newspapers (46.8%), followed by conflict frame (22.7%), human interest frame (18.1%) and political frame (7.8%). Economic and religious frames had 2.6% and 2.0% respectively. The study found that newspaper framing of Boko Haram likely did not exacerbate the crisis but contributed in finding solution to it.