Framing of Rural Development Issues in Nigeria Print Media

Abstract

Textual, audio, visual presentations of events and issues to the society with adequate emphasis and constant coverage in the print media set an undeniable agenda for the citizen to be mindful of the events or item of discourse. The issue of rural development is central to the overall growth of a country and media setting rural development agenda is their social responsibility to the people. It is a fact that myriads of maladies of rural communities in Nigeria remain unattended to by the government with formulated policies that lack executable powers as absence of rural media philosophy compounded the problems and the voiceless remain obscure.  The study adopts content analysis of print media content manifest.  The population for this study are four widely read newspapers: Punch, The Guardian, This Day and The Nations.  Systematic random sampling was employed to select 140 editions from 1092 editions that covers from January to June, 2017. The research instrument employed was coding sheet with content categories and unit of analysis: editorial, features, photographs and news items that serve as parameters. Findings revealed that there were 1945 news items as contained in the four newspapers covering the chosen content categories out of which 67 news items were devoted to rural development. The 3.4% news items on rural development revealed that the media did not set agenda for rural development.  The study concludes that media as a way of social responsibility did not fully protect the fundamental human right of rural dwellers if media content on rural communities does not translate to public agenda and eventually leads to policy agenda formulation.