Content Analysis of Agricultural News in Botswana Newspapers

Abstract

The research paper analyzed the content of agricultural news coverage in Mmegi The Reporter and The Botswana Daily News newspapers by determining the frequency and space allocation to agricultural education news in the newspapers from January 2006 to June 2008. Stratified random sampling was used to select 2 newspapers from 10 in circulation in the country based on ownership. Data were collected from newspapers issued on Monday , Wednesday and Friday and were analyzed with SPSS version 16 using frequency counts percentages and one-way analysis of variance. The results show that in privately owned newspaper, about 61 percent of agriculture news is in advertisement category and in government owned newspaper it is about 49 percent. The study has also shown that privately owned newspaper has more agriculture news on the front page, 39.1 percent as compared to 6.1 percent in government owned newspaper . In privately owned newspaper, 17.4 percent of agriculture news is in Setswana language and 57.6 percent in English language, whereas in government owned newspaper 6.1 percent of the agriculture news is in Setswana language and 60.2 percent in English. There is a significant dif ference between spaces allocated to agriculture news in privately owned newspaper . It is recommended that government owned newspaper must increase coverage of agriculture news in Setswana.