Citation :

Isikilu Bayo Oloyede, Akinola Moses Owolabi, 2024. "Newspaper Framing of Political Parties’ Primaries in the Run-Off to Nigeria’s 2023 Presidential Election" ESP International Journal of Science, Humanities & Management Studies(ESP-IJSHMS)  Volume 2, Issue 1: 35-47.

Abstract :

Framing has been used to explain people’s attitudinal and behavioural dispositions to issues based on the perspectives of media reportage. The presidential primaries of political parties in the run-off to the 2023 presidential elections occupied a critical stage in the electoral process which produced Bola Ahmed Tinubu as the sixth democratically elected President of Nigeria. This research was carried out to examine how newspapers in Nigeria framed stories on the presidential primaries of the two leading political parties: The All Progressives Congress, APC, and the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, preparatory to the 2023 presidential polls. The framing theory was used as the framework while content analysis was adopted as the methodology for the study. The result showed the preponderance of news stories over editorials, features and columns. Nine different frames were found in this study with zoning taking the lead. The study concludes that newspapers’ framing of the presidential primaries of APC and PDP centred on regional interest via zoning, personality projection and aspirant’s strength of character instead of their enunciated course of action if chosen as their parties’ flagbearers in the 2023 elections. It was therefore recommended that there is need for the press in Nigeria to always focus on campaign of issues ahead of other considerations in their framing of stories in the reportage of subsequent primaries of political parties.

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Keywords :

Newspapers, Framing, Democracy, Political Parties, Party Primaries, Elections.