| Abstract: |
The recurrence of farmers-herders' conflict in Nigeria with significant implications
on security and socio-economic lives of the people had made it a center of attraction
to the media. The media being a double-edge sword has the potential to positively or
negatively frame the conflict through selection of issues and news sources to quote
on the issue. This indeed has impact on public perception on the matter and conflict
resolution efforts. This study therefore analysed the contents of Daily Trust, The
Guardian, Leadership and Vanguard newspapers examining the type of news
frames they used and the dominant news sources they quoted in the news frames.
The study was anchored on framing and media indexing theories. Quantitative
content analysis was employed as the research method while multi-stage sampling
technique was used in selecting the newspapers and the dates for analysis. Some of
the major findings of the study revealed that political, militancy and solution frames
were the most dominant news frames used across the newspapers. Vanguard and
The Guardian newspapers were leading in labelling the conflict as militancy
activity and in politicizing issues on the conflict while Daily Trust and Leadership
were leading in proffering solution to the conflict. State Government officials and
the newspapers' correspondents were the most dominant news sources quoted in the
political, militancy and solution news frames across the newspapers. The study
recommended that the newspapers should refrain from politicizing issues related to the conflict or assigning pejorative labels like “killers”, “criminals”, or “murderer”
to any parties involved in the conflict. This is because the use of such frames not
only escalate the conflict but also threaten the conflict resolution efforts. To ensure
this, the Nigerian Press Council, and Nigerian Guild of Editors should actively
censor, monitor and enforce ethical journalistic standards to minimize the use of
biased and inflammatory reporting that can promote tension and undermine
national security. |
