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A Comparative Study Of Newspaper Coverage Of Rural/urban Problems In Imo State
[A CONTENT ANALYSIS OF DAILY CHAMPION, THE SUN AND VANGUARD NEWSPAPERS] -
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CHAPTER THREE METHODOLOGY
3.1 Research Methodology
Aware of the unique characteristic of the study which dwells on the coverage of rural development activities in Imo State by three newspapers viz The Daily Champion, The Sun, and The Vanguard, the researcher adopt content analysis as the most appropriate, efficient and accurate research technique for work.
Being a quantitative research tool, content analysis is also a systematic procedure that is applied to determine objectively, what is being reported in the print media. Content analysis was therefore used in this study to assess and analyze the manifest content of the selected issues of the three Nigerian dailies used, Viz. The Daily Champion , The Sun, and Vanguard.
The choice of this method was necessitated by the fact that the determination of the extent of coverage of community development problems (urban/rural) in Imo State by these Nigerian newspapers could only be done through a system and quantitative study of the contents of the newspapers.
Such a quantification in a research work of this kind helpe d the researcher tremendously to achieve a high of reliability, authenticity and precision.
3.2 Universe a nd Target Population
The study has its universe all the issues published by the three newspapers Viz The Daily Champion, The Sun, and The Vanguard in February, 2004, as they relate to urban and rural problems in Imo State.
However, in order to achieve high level precision, the study considered news stories on the front, back and inside pages of The Daily Champion, The Sun, and The Vanguard, excluding the sports, entertainment and women pages as well as weekend editions. The weekend editions of the three newspapers were not taken into account because of their irregular nature as well as entertainment orientation. The weekend editions, of course, include all such issues that a republished for Saturday and Sundays.
In the research design, data was collected along the units of position or placement, volume or space and number of items.
These units were chosen to help provide answers to research questions.
The three newspapers The Daily Champion, The Sun, and The Vanguard, were content analyzed to establish whether ownership has any bearing on level of coverage of rural/urban problems in Imo State, bearing in mind that one of the newspapers is owned an Imo St ate indigene.
Besides, each of the newspapers was analyzed to determine the depth of coverage of rural vis -Ã -vis urban problems in Imo State.
These news items were coded in accordance with the following variables.
VOLUME: The length of an issue in inches PLACEMENT: Front, back and inside pages
NO OF ITEMS: The amount of news items noted in a particular page.
SPECIFICATION: It was professionally assumed that at least, the first to paragraphs should contain the main gist of the story. The researcher, therefor e, used the inverted pyramid system (first two major paragraphs) of the story to determine whether such stories had urban or rural developmental undertones.
3.2 Research Sample Size
Three Nigerian newspapers, namely, The Sun, Vanguard and Daily Champion w ere content analyzed for the period of one month- February 2004 editions.
The month under review was enough to determine a newspaper’s consistency in reporting or covering a particular area, which in this case is Imo state, in terms of the Urban and rural problems therein.
3.3 Sampling Techniques
The systematic sampling method was used to select a truly representative sample of the editions of the newspaper studied. Out of a population of 60 issues of the three newspapers, for the month of February, 2004, 24 issues were systematically selected using a sampling fraction of 1/3. Hence, every third issue or edition of the three newspapers was content - analyzed consisted of all editions of the three newspapers published within the month of February, save, of c ourse, Saturday and Sunday publications because of their irregular nature as well as entertainment orientation.
3.4 Sources o f Data
The three selected dailies serve as the primary sources of data for this study. These dailies were sourced from the university Library, Awka, news stands in Awka metropolis, as well as Daily Champion office in Owerri Imo state. The relevant dailies, here, include, Daily champion, The sun and Vanguard.
3.5 Instrument f or Data Collection
A well-structured coding scheme that divided the variables of interest into categories, and assigned numerals to them, was used as both the measuring instrument and material for data collection. This is in order to obtain reliable and valid information, an d to ensure prompt analysis of the data so collected.
Simple percentage was applied appropriately so as to be able to describe the data collected, explicitly.
After the analysis of the research questions, other information and data to the result of the con tents analyzed were equally proved.
For instance, the fact that one of the proprietors of the three newspapers hailed from Imo State, had bearing on the extent of coverage of the area by the newspaper concerned, like the other two dailies whose owners are non-indigenes of the state.
This, therefore, explains the wider coverage of rural and urban problems in Imo State by the Daily Champion newspaper, than the coverage given to the same area by The Sun and Vanguard newspapers.
METHOD OF ANALYZING DATA
The results from the data were analyzed step by step inline with the research questions.
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ABSRACT - [ Total Page(s): 1 ]ABSTRACTOver the years, successive governments in the underdeveloped countries have regrettably adopted a lackadaisical, impractical, apathetic and lip service attitude towards the transformation of their rural communities whose inhabitants constitute in some places more than 70% of their respective populations.In Nigeria for instance, the situatio n has reached an alarming stage, more so when one considers th ... Continue reading---
APPENDIX A - [ Total Page(s): 1 ]APPENDIXCODE CATEGORIES FOR VARIABLES OF INTEREST COLUMN CATEGORY1. Name of Newspaper2. Location3. Month of Publication4. Date of publication5. Number of items6. Items classification7. Form of items8. Nature of item9. PlacementCODING INSTRUCTIONSName of newspapers: Daily Champion = DCVanguard VgDaily Sun DSLocation: DC-Lagos = LAVG-Lagos = LADS -Lagos = LAMonth of publication: FEB - ... Continue reading---
LIST OF TABLES - [ Total Page(s): 1 ]LIST OF TABLESTable 1: Urban rural problems in Imo State as published by the three newspapers grouped into contents categoriesTable 2: Coverage of urban vis -Ã -vis rural problems in Imo state by the three newspapersTable 3: Content Placement of urban/rural problems in Imo state by the three newspapersTable 4: Content emphasis in terms of story length by the three news papersTable 5: Content emphasis in terms of hard news by the th ree news papersTable 6: Content emphasis in terms of fea ... Continue reading---
TABLE OF CONTENTS - [ Total Page(s): 1 ] TABLE OF CONTENTS Title page Approval page Dedication Acknowledgement Abstract Table of contents List of tables CHAPTER 1: Introduction Background of the study Statement of the problems Theoretical orientation Objective of the study Significance of the study Research Questions Limitation Delimitation Definitions of Terms CHAPTER 2: Literature Review 2.1 I ... Continue reading---
CHAPTER ONE - [ Total Page(s): 2 ]THEORETICAL ORIENTATIONThis research work is based on two major theories, the development media theory and the Democratic participant media theory. Both theories emerge out of the realization that the original four classical theories viz, the authoritarian, Libertarian, social responsibility and Soviet-communist theories, do not apply strictly to developing countries or where they can be applied, have lim ... Continue reading---
CHAPTER TWO - [ Total Page(s): 3 ]not far from the point when he noted that lack of media resources such as man power, tra nsportation and communication equipment was mainly responsible for low coverage of rural news by newspapers in developing countries such as Nigeria, his findings were a confirmation of that by francis Voelker (1972) in his “Mass Media Forces in our society †as well as that Kimio Uno (1982) in is study on ... Continue reading---
CHAPTER FOUR - [ Total Page(s): 3 ]The above table is an indica tor of the fact that rural matters hardly attract front pages attention of our national dailies as the studies on daily Champion, The Sun and Vanguard exemplify.As studies have shown, government newspapers gives more front pages coverage to rural issues t han private-owned ones. The reason is not far -fetched: they do this furtherance of their egoistic political ambition to portray their administration as grassroots-orientated, even where in reality, nothing is on th ... Continue reading---
CHAPTER FIVE - [ Total Page(s): 2 ]CHAPTER FIVESUMMARY CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION5.1 SUMMARYFrom the study, two facts have been established:a. The ownership of a newspaper is a very important and crucial factor in the extent of coverage of rural and urban problems in a developing society. This is reflected in the editorial policy and the attention, though grossly inadequate, which the ownership o f the Daily Champion which gave the largest coverage to urban and rural problems in the study, is from Imo state, speaki ... Continue reading---
REFRENCES - [ Total Page(s): 1 ]BIBLIOGRAPHYBittner, J .R.(1989) Mass Communication, An Introduction . 5th Edition. New J ersey, Prentice Hall Inc.Edeani, O.D (190) “ Impact of Ownership on National newspapers Coverage of a Mass mobilization campaign†in Nigerian Journal of Mass Communication . Enugu, Magnet Enterprises .Gana, J . (1988). “The need for adequate enlightenment in socio - economic Lifeâ€. Paper presented at the workshop organized by MAMSER on Reporting Techniques for MAMSER programm ... Continue reading---
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ABSRACT - [ Total Page(s): 1 ]ABSTRACTOver the years, successive governments in the underdeveloped countries have regrettably adopted a lackadaisical, impractical, apathetic and lip service attitude towards the transformation of their rural communities whose inhabitants constitute in some places more than 70% of their respective populations.In Nigeria for instance, the situatio n has reached an alarming stage, more so when one considers th ... Continue reading---
CHAPTER THREE -- [Total Page(s) 1]
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CHAPTER THREE -- [Total Page(s) 1]
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