Newspaper coverage of health millenium development goals in Nigeria

2013

Enhancing the quality of health of Ghanaians is central to the ability of the country to create and maintain a healthy pool of labor force for its socio-economic development as well as enabling people to live in dignity. The media can influence people with relevant information to empower them in their health-seeking behavior and attitudes. Through a content analysis of three newspapers – Daily Graphic, Ghanaian Times, and Public Agenda – this paper interrogates how Ghanaian newspapers portray shared understandings of issues and problems of health through framing of newspaper articles to empower readers towards attainment of greater health. The paper examines how health issues are framed and the kinds of solutions offered to address them.

Interações: Sociedade e as novas modernidades

The mass media are important for wide dissemination of health information. The frame of reference adopted in the reportage of health issues tends to influence people’s perception towards health related issues. Studies examining framing of health issues have found the me- dia wanting in their reportage of health. This study extends the frontier of framing analysis of health coverage in the media by examining framing of maternal and child healthcare (MCH) issues in Nigerian newspapers. Using the content analyses method, two categories of frames – public health frame, and coping versus alarm message frame – were examined in the study. Four national newspapers were purposively sampled over a 12-month period resulting in the analysis of 1,235 MCH-related editorial items. The study found minimal adoption of public health frame with only 12% adoption rate, and dominant adoption of coping frame over alarm frame with rare combination of both. The findings reflect the implication of greater r...

The objectives of the study among others were to find out the extent of coverage given to The HIV/AIDS issue in the Nigerian print media and to synthesize based on the foregoing the overall disposition of the Nigerian press towards the HIV/AIDS issue. The procedure entailed an analysis of the manifest content of three national newspaper and two national magazines-The Guardian, Vanguard and Punch newspapers and Tell and Newswatch magazines. The papers and magazines ,, 1(1 were purposely selected based on their nationwide spread. >-\ The data revealed great uniformity in the pattern of coverage given to the HIV/AIDS issue by the newspapers and magazines studied. This uniformity no doubt centered around inadequate coverage of the HIV/AIDs issue. A summation of this data revealed that the Nigerian journalistic practice does not in anyway fall within the ambits of development journalism.

2020

Nigeria is a developing country with varied developmental challenges. It has one of the worst maternal and child healthcare (MCH) indices, globally. The media, as a vital element within the society, has the potential to contribute to improving MCH through appropriate framing and communication of MCH issues. Achieving media inclusion poses a challenge as media contents are often products of varied power relations. Extant studies have established that health is often not primed in Nigerian newspapers where politics and business hold sway. News media contents are also influenced by varied factors which exists both within and outside of news media organisations. Premised on sociology of news as critical perspective, this study examines power relations in newspaper representation of MCH issues in Nigeria. Combining content analysis of MCH-related stories in newspapers with in-depth interview of newspaper health editors, it explores factors and underlying reasons driving coverage of MCH. ...

The Pan African medical journal, 2014

One consensus in discussions on HIV/AIDS communication in low and middle income countries (LMICs) is the need for communication models to focus on activity rather than cognitive indicators in order to achieve desired improvements in health behaviors and outcomes. Past failures of HIV/AIDS communication efforts in LMICs have been attributed to emphasis on cognitive indicators. This study analyses HIV/AIDS communication models in Nigerian newspapers. Data were obtained through analysis of manifest content of four Nigerian papers issued between 2002 and 2004. Frequency, prominence and space dedicated to HIV/AIDS-related topics were measured. Descriptive statistics were used to highlight the frequency and percentage of cognitive- and activity-oriented information on HIV/AIDS. A total of 464 HIV/AIDS-related articles were identified. Fifty-nine percent (274) of articles were activity-oriented. Over half of articles were news stories. No news story made front and back pages lead. There we...

2021

This study examined an analysis of selected newspapers coverage of development news in Nigeria. While discussions and findings regarding media role have been mixed and inconclusive, recent study has characterized the press in Nigeria as ineffective in news dissemination and analysis, and described its relationship with governments as controversial and antagonistic. Thus, newspapers when properly conceived can be more than reporting mere events to becoming an instigator of development. The objectives was to ascertain the volume of coverage given to development issues in Nigeria by selected newspapers from January to August 2020, to determine the level of significance attached to development news in Nigeria by the selected newspapers from January to August 2020 and to examine the type of report that received more attention by the selected newspapers in their coverage of development issues in Nigeria. Agenda Setting theory and Media Development theory was adopted for this study. Strati...

Global health action, 2013

The current overriding thought in HIV/AIDS communication in developing countries is the need for a shift from the cognitive model, which emphasises the decision-making of the individual, to the activity model, which emphasises the context of the individual. In spite of the acknowledged media shift from the cognitive to the activity model in some developing countries, some HIV/AIDS communication scholars have felt otherwise. It was against this background that this study examined the content of some selected Nigerian newspapers to ascertain the attention paid to HIV/AIDS cognitive and activity information. Generally, the study found that Nigerian newspapers had shifted from the cognitive to the activity model of communication in their coverage of HIV/AIDS issues. The findings of the study seem inconsistent with the theoretical argument of some scholars that insufficient attention has been paid by mass media in developing countries to the activity model of HIV/AIDS communication. It i...

International Journal of Education Management and Technology, 2023

This paper explores the role of mass media in health communication campaigns for rural development in the 21st century Nigeria. Mass media have been found to be critical components of Nigeria's rural development because of their role in disseminating health communication messages with the aim of empowering and improving the health knowledge and skills as well as changing health behaviours of rural dwellers to improve their living conditions. The paper meticulously pinpoints the contributions of mass media in health communication; identified some select health communication programmes that succeeded in Nigeria courtesy of mass media amplification role as well as explored the challenges of mass media channels in rural health communication efforts. The paper is anchored on the agenda setting theory. The paper concluded that mass media are catalysts to rural development in Nigeria. The study recommended that communication should be the priority of government and development programme designers because of the pivotal role it plays in combating ignorance and misinformation in public health issues in Nigeria.