Newspaper Coverage of Diabetes in Nigeria: a Content Analysis of Selected National Dailies

Abstract

This study investigates newspaper coverage of diabetes in Nigeria with specific emphasis on frequency, interpretative of text, Volume and prominence coverage. Four newspapers- The Punch, Leadership, Daily Sun and Daily Trust were selected for the study, with views to represent the northern and Southern divide of the country. The study duration was two years (January 1st 2012 – December 31st 2014) while Holsti’s Inter Coder reliability was applied to determine the reliability for the study and this yielded 0.84 which was considered high. Content analysis was adopted for the study, while result showed among others, that out of the 416 editions that were sampled, 201 (48%) editions had stories on diabetes while the remaining 215 (52%) had no stories on the diabetes disease whatsoever. Findings further revealed that 51.7% of the stories on diabetes were non interpretative/non educative. With regards to volume of coverage, it was found that most of the stories on diabetes were in small volume as 51.7% were on quarter page. Finally, the result indicates that less prominence was given to diabetes issues. This is because, 50. 7% of the stories were found on the inside page while only 14.4% were on the front page. Based on the result of this study, the researcher concludes that the two newspapers failed to properly set agenda on diabetes, thus, failing short of their social responsibility to the Nigerian society. The researcher recommends among others that Nigerian newspapers should improve in their coverage of diabetes considering its deadly nature.