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. Key terms: Newspapers’ contents; Political crisis