CURSORY LOOK AT TYPES OF NEWSPAPERS’ CONTENTS ON POLITICAL CRISIS SITUATIONS IN NIGERIA

Abstract

Newspapers are seemingly synonymous with news stories, most interestingly,
during political crisis situations, anywhere in the world. However, there exist
other types of newspapers’ contents employable in any newspapers’ coverage of
issues or events. This paper therefore seeks to determine the major types of
newspapers’ contents on political crisis situations in Nigeria; and ascertain the
extent to which news stories are higher than other types of newspapers’ contents
on political crisis situations in Nigeria. The media dependency theory frames the
study, while the content analysis research design via coding sheet was adopted as
the study design towards obtaining the needed primary data. The study concludes
that newspapers in Nigeria are grossly but surprisingly lacking in editorials on
political crisis situations; news stories are consistently the major type of
newspapers’ content on political issues or events; there is a significant difference
between the newspapers contents that are news stories and other types of content;
the three major types of newspapers’ coverage of the selected political crisis
situations that were studied are news stories; letters/text-to-the-editor; and
features. However, there is no significant difference between the numbers of
newspapers’ news stories between each political crisis situations studied.
Recommendations include: an improved interest in other types of newspapers’
content in order to inculcate versatility which may help towards public opinion
formation, especially, during political crisis situations; also newspaper editors
should and must considered the voice of the newspapers (editorials) as a major or
main stay of newspapers during, but not just political crisis situations.