Abstract
There is a known fact that the public depends largely on the media for information. However, such information might not have been perceived rightly as sent by the media. Hence, the objective of this study is to examine the extent to which information on the coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic containment policy flows from the government to the public through the pages of newspapers. Aside from examining how these policies were framed, it seeks to also find out if Nigerians perceived the coverage by newspapers as relevant for them to comply with them. Adopting a descriptive methodological approach which systematically differs from most previous studies because substantial studies on the subject matter use qualitative methods. Findings reveal that Newspapers’ framing of COVID-19 stories does not correlate with public adherence to the government’s containment policy and the volume of newspaper coverage of COVID-19 stories does not correlate with public perception of the importance of the government containment policy on the disease. The study concluded that even though advancement in technology has given rise to the use of other media such as social media, the efficacy/potency and relevance of the newspaper cannot be brushed aside despite this advancement. It is, however, recommended that further studies should be conducted to examine the challenges faced by press through Key Informant Interview (KII) in the carrying coverage on the COVID-19 pandemic in other to strike balance.
Introduction
Epidemics, endemics and pandemics are not new to man but the coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic came as a rude shock to the global community, bringing her health care, political, economic and social system to a standstill. The effect of this is still being felt today in every aspect of life despite discoveries of vaccines to curb the spread of the virus (Basch et al., 2020; World Health Organization, 2020). COVID-19 is a novel disease that is caused by a virus known as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) which has spread the world over. This virus is a family of viruses which cause problems for the human respiratory system (World Health Organization, 2020). Infections before coronaviruses were known as SARS-CoV-1 (in 2002) and MERS-COV (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) which, in 2012, recorded more than 10,000 persons infected. The index case of COVID-19 was recorded sometimes in November 2019, in Wuhan, China, as the world battles the pandemic, with hope for a cure and vaccines in the first year of its spread (Brown & Udomisor, 2015). A person infected by this virus may or not show symptoms, but if the symptoms show, they range from minor to severe (Alberca et al., 2020).
The usual symptoms range from dry cough, headache, tiredness, fever, sore throat and in extreme cases shortness of breath. It is on record that the symptoms show between 2 and 14 days of infection. However, based on estimation, an infection could spread rapidly if not well managed, as the number of people infected could double nearly weekly during the outbreak (Huang et al., 2020). Historically, Nigeria declared her index case of COVID-19 in the early hours of 28 February 2020 and this led to the setting up of the National Coronavirus Emergency Operation Center in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). The Nigeria Center for Disease Control (NCDC) had a rapid deployment of manpower and resources to battle the Ebola disease in the year 2014 and this received accolades from the global community and World Health Organization (WHO). The Ebola occurrence recorded 15,000 established cases and more than 9,000 assumed cases in West Africa. It was put under control in 92 days in Nigeria. WHO described this feat as a “piece of world-class epidemiological detective work” (Gever & Ezeah, 2020). Coronavirus in Nigeria, as reported in the mass media first reared its head in Nigeria on 27 February 2020 when an Italian citizen, who was 44 years of age, was diagnosed with COVID-19 in Lagos State. He came into the country via Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos on 24 February at 10 p.m. aboard a Turkish Airline from Milan, Italy. He later journeyed to where his company’s site is in Ogun State on 25 February, and presented himself the next day at the company’s clinic where the doctor who attended to him suspected possible COVID-19.
Due to a lack of facility to ascertain this suspicion, he was then referred, on 27 February, to the Virology Laboratory of Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) which is part of the Laboratory Network of NCDC and his sample taken returned positive (Uchejeso et al., 2020). After this, a multi-sectorial National Emergency Operation Center (MNEOC) was set up by the NCDC. State governments in Nigeria followed this step to activate their Response Centers. The Federal Government of Nigeria initiated a Presidential Task Force on COVID-19, now the Presidential Steering Committee on COVID-19, to provide a strategic national response to the disease in Nigeria (Talabi et al., 2022). The Federal Ministry of Health, in March 2020, also activated an NCDC-led national COVID-19 Emergency Operations Center (EOC) to coordinate the national public health response (Uchejeso et al., 2020). At the state level, preparedness and response activities were coordinated through Public Health EOCs in each state. The NCDC also launched a campaign themed #TakeResponsibility. This was a call to all Nigerians and residents in the country to join forces and be proactive in taking greater individual and collective responsibility for preventing and controlling the spread of COVID-19 in Nigeria (Uchejeso et al., 2020).
The aftermath of the index case made the Presidential Task Force to manage 10 key areas of operation on the nation’s containment response to the COVID-19 pandemic (Kalu, 2020). These areas include but are not limited to epidemiology and surveillance, laboratory, case management, infection, prevention and control, risk communication and community engagement, security, logistics and mass care, research, coordination and resource mobilization, finance monitoring and compliance and point of entry with daily media briefings being held at the functional areas and coordination level (Ingwu et al., 2016). It is noteworthy that mainstream media, most especially the newspaper, has played a key role in disseminating news about the current pandemic and aiding in information sources since the outbreak (Banka, 2020; Jha, 2020). Data show that there has been a substantial increase in news consumption in many parts of the world, Nigeria inclusive (D’Angelo, 2002; Happer & Philo, 2013).
In the past, during the Ebola outbreak instead of focusing attention on medical facts and the actual viral outbreak, sensationalized coverage using less relevant content by news media outlets whipped up hysteria and fear in the United States and other countries of the world (Kilgo et al., 2019; Towers et al., 2015). It must be highlighted that news is all about perception and the media achieve this through framing (Hoeve et al., 2012; Joslyn & Heider, 2002). The public would, often, largely perceive reality as framed by the media because the media mirrors society and this is key if the public must accept information on COVID-19 as presented by the mass media (Druckman, 2001; Ghirlanda et al., 2014). There is a known fact that the public depends largely on the media for information. However, such information might have been distorted by some form of bias or otherwise, due to the gatekeeping process that the mass media is known for. Hence, the objective of this study is to critically examine the extent to which information on the COVID-19 pandemic containment policy flows from the government to the people (populace) through the pages of newspapers. Aside examining how these policies were framed, it seeks to also find out if Nigerians perceived the coverage by newspapers as relevant for them to comply with them.
Conceptual and Theoretical Framework
Nigeria is regarded as the most populous black nation in the world and is estimated to be 200 million in population size. Like other nations, she battled with the reality of the COVID-19 pandemic, a global development concern. Various studies showed that the Nigerian mass media played a critical role, through social responsibility, to disseminate relevant information regarding the COVID-19 pandemic (Talabi et al., 2022). However, some of the major news headlines caused panic due to the way they were framed and exposed to the public. Fundamentally, traditional media, in general, are seen to give more news/information that is credible compared with online/social media because of the originality in its information source, which is processed via journalistic ethical standards and palpable responsibility for accuracy of news (Lim & Seo, 2009; Wada, 2018). In a study by Tandoc (2019), it was found that the respondents rated news from traditional media to be more credible than those shared by their friends on online/social media platforms, most especially (Facebook).
During the current COVID-19 pandemic, a lot of studies were done addressing the spread by social media of disinformation, misinformation, infodemics and fake news and its impact on individual mental health and well-being (Brennen et al., 2020; Gao et al., 2020; Pennycook et al., 2020). The impact of traditional media reportage of the pandemic, most especially the newspaper remains underexplored by and large. From the aforementioned, it is a convincing reality that the novel COVID-19 is a pandemic ravaged every sector of the world but of grave concern is the information that got to the people through the media on containment policy put in place to curb the spread and keep them safe should there be an occurrence in the future. As this virus became a major disease in 2020, since it broke out in Wuhan, China in November 2019, governments across the globe started taking drastic measures toward preventing its spread (Apuke & Omar, 2021a). However, these measures are continuously disseminated through various media to numerous citizens in virtually all continents (Ale, 2020). Most often, there are scholarly notions that the final information on containment policy that gets to the people from the government through the media does not retain its intended meaning because it has gone through the gatekeeping process of the media, thereby breeding doubts on the policy formulated for the end-users. Generally, people concentrate more on the government than the media, yet they receive most of their information from the mediated messages that originate from the media (Akpobo, 2015; Mach et al., 2021; Oloyede et al., 2015).
Universally, communication is the process of sharing thoughts and ideas or disseminating messages/information among people across divides. From a linear point of view, it is the process of sending information between a sender and a receiver but the best way to look at communication is its transactional nature where there is feedback in the communication process (Ohia et al., 2020). In communication, there is “encoding and decoding,” because when symbols are shared, that is when there is effective communication (Paluck et al., 2015). Since the virus has become a worldwide pandemic, dominating the news as well as changing people’s everyday life globally, the media has played a key role in the gathering, processing and dissemination of information on it to the citizens. There is, therefore, the need to ascertain how they perceived the information they received from the media, especially the newspaper, on government containment policy. It is important to also critically consider if the populace received the intended government’s information, regardless of how the media framed such information, most especially information regarding the causes and ways to prevent the spread of the coronavirus without it losing originality as sent by the government or its agencies.
In addition to ascertaining whether such information is framed and reported with prominence to portray the magnitude of the issue by Nigerian newspapers. It is also expedient to ascertain other factors that may break the communication cycle, thereby altering the intended meaning of information sent from the sender (government) to the receiver (Nigerians) in a dire situation such as the COVID-19. There is no contention that the Nigerian media provided substantive information on the government’s COVID-19 containment policy with research such as Apuke and Omar (2021b), Gever and Ezeah (2020), Ale (2020) and Kalu (2020) highlighting these efforts. However, interrogation of extant literature does not reveal how the messages regarding these measures, published on the pages of newspapers were framed to make the public perceive the pandemic as highly significant for prevention, containment and adherence to the policies rolled out by the Nigerian government through the Ministry of Health and other agencies such as NCDC. This is the clear gap this study has filled.
Faming Theory
The core assumption of the framing theory as put forward by Erving in 1974 is not on the frequency of news coverage but the angle that the media projects in its contents from time to time. For example, there could be many positive stories about the armed forces but one negative story concerning its human rights records could have a serious negative impact on its image (Hoeve et al., 2012; Ingwu et al., 2016). Another illustration concerning the power of media framing is when many journalists attend a press conference. All of them may have listened to the same source, but the moment the reports about the press conference begin to come out, different stories will be in the public. The journalists will frame the event in different ways. The reaction that people will demonstrate concerning the matter is likely dependent on the frames they are exposed to (see also Druckman, 2001). Scholars (Entman, 1993; Gever & Ezeah, 2020) in media studies have found the framing theory as an instrumental prism for examining how the media select issues, process them (by way of editing) and report them. The framework offers insight into understanding the power of media contents within the context of media reportage. The mass media of communication has the power to form an image for professions, institutions and organizations (Lippmann, 1922). Walter Lippmann in his 1922 Public Opinion, which opened with a chapter, captioned “The World Outside and the Pictures in Our Heads” credits the media with the power to form an image. Image manifests in public opinions and beliefs.
Happer and Philo (2013) examine the influence the media commands on the determination of public views and behaviors and its relationship to social change and revealed the link between awful media report of people on disability benefits and the attitude others demonstrate regarding them. This suggests that the image of the Armed Forces presented in the media is likely to influence public attitudes and beliefs about them. Although there may be different measures of the media image of organizations and individuals, story themes are appropriate in the study of the media-image nexus. Scholars such as (Ghirlanda et al., 2014; Heatherton & Sargent, 2009; Paluck et al., 2015) have argued that these measures (story themes) can effectively provide insights into the image of individuals or institutions in the media. Story themes are arrived at through the use of frames. Media frames describe specific angles that are projected in media. It focuses on areas that are highlighted in media content. To frame is to “select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more pronounced in a communicating text, in a manner that promotes a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and treatment recommendation for the item described” (Entman, 1993, p. 52). The framing of media content has been rigorously investigated, especially among media scholars and its boundaries keep expanding over the years.
D’Angelo (2002) reveals that more than 10 years of empirical studies concerning framing found 3 essential processes: frame construction as the first, framing effects as the second and frame definition as the third. Frame construction borders on how media personnel present the elements of news stories. This is done through the formats that they use, values, sources, as well as the devices applied. Framing effects studies are concerned with the consequence of news framing (D’Angelo, 2002). Finally, frame definition pays attention to the content of news stories as a result of how the media propel the definition of the situation. Therefore, the media construct some aspects of issues using the range of information, making a decision on sources strategically and placing a baseline for policy discourse (Putnam & Shoemaker, 2007). In this study, the researcher adopted framing construction to examine media frames of Covid-19 pandemic stories in Nigeria. Joslyn and Heider’s (2002) highlighted the fact that message contents play an essential role in determining the effect of media frames. Evidence in literature as seen in (e.g., Lim & Seo, 2009; Terkildsen, & Schnell, 1997) suggests that media frames significantly influence public opinion and perception. It must be highlighted that in real life, the news is all about perception and the media achieves this through framing (Hoeve et al., 2012; Joslyn and Heider, 2002). The public would, often, largely perceive reality as framed by the media because the media mirrors society and this is key if the public must accept information on COVID-19 as presented by the mass media (Druckman, 2001; Ghirlanda et al., 2014).
Research Hypotheses
This study is guided by the following research hypotheses:
Ho: There is no correlation between Newspapers’ framing of COVID-19 stories and public adherence to the government’s containment policy.
Ho: There is no correlation between the volume of newspaper coverage of COVID-19 stories and public perception on the importance of the government containment policy on the disease.
Methods
The study adopted a quantitative design and used survey as a method of data collection. Above all, the data from the survey was used to find out how the public perceived newspapers’ coverage and framing of COVID-19 pandemic stories cum adherence to the government’s containment policy among Nigerians during the year under review. The population of the study is 213,401,323 Nigerians spread across the 6 geopolitical zones (World Bank, 2022). To systematically select a sample size from the larger population that was involved in this study, the researchers used Taro Yamane’s (1967) sample size formula to arrive at 400. Using the multistage cluster and purposive sampling technique, the respondents for this study are drawn from one state capital in each of the six geopolitical zones in Nigeria. The target population based on the country’s 6 geopolitical zones is 4,580,852. This was arrived at based on the fact that, in North-Central, respondents were drawn from Ilorin, the Kwara State capital in Ilorin South (280,396) and West (489,396) LGAs in North-East, respondents were drawn from Yola, in Yola North (267,563) and South (262,904) LGAs the Adamawa State capital, North-West, respondents were drawn from Kaduna in Kaduna North (488,531) and Kaduna South (539,660) LGAs the Kaduna State capital, South-East, respondents are drawn from Umuahia, the Abia State capital in Umuahia North (299,000) and Umuahia South (186,338) LGAs, South-South, respondents were drawn from Port-Harcourt (721,668) and Ikwerre (253,166) LGAs the Rivers State capital and South-Western, respondents were drawn from Ibadan, in Ibadan North (412,879) and Ibadan West (379,351) LGAs the Oyo State capital. In the distribution of questionnaires based on the sample size, 368 were returned and valid for data computation as well as analysis (Table 1).
Showing the Distribution of the questionnaire to Respondents
Source: Researcher’s Survey Computation, 2023.
Population Figure (World Bank, 2022).
Results and Discussion
This section is designed to test the hypotheses earlier stated for this using Pearson correlation statistical test. The study will be testing two hypotheses derived from the research question which examines if there is any connection between Nigerian newspaper framing of COVID-19 stories and public perception and the decision to adhere to government containment policy during the pandemic. Hence, two hypotheses are derived from the question and are tested below.
The Decision Rule
There were two research hypotheses set for this study. The hypotheses strongly submitted that there are no significant correlations between the two different variables. However, this is a parametric correlation analysis using two-tailed tests. In the same vein; the analysis involved two types of hypotheses, the null and alternative hypothesis, after which, one of the two is accepted and the other rejected. The hypotheses were tested using a 99% confidence level and Pearson correlation. Succinctly put, if the p-value is greater than the significance level (a = .05): the Null Hypothesis (H0) is accepted, while the Alternate Hypothesis (Hi) is rejected. If otherwise, the Alternative Hypothesis (Hi) is accepted (H0) and the Null Hypothesis is automatically rejected.
Hypothesis 1
The result shows that there is a correlation between newspapers’ framing of COVID-19 stories and public adherence to the government’s containment policy but the correlation is weak .003). This means that newspaper framing of COVID-19 stories during the pandemic has a minimal influence on Nigerians’ adherence to the containment policy. In other words, other factors might have influenced the public to adopt the government’s COVID-19 containment policy aside from the Newspapers’ coverage and framing of the stories. Supporting this finding, works of literature reveal that Nigerians were forced to adhere to the COVID-19 containment policy during the pandemic due to the global seat-at-home policy. Also, many Nigerians do not believe the disease exists for real in Nigeria except some few persons who know people close to them somehow contacted the virus (Ashraf, 2020; Erdem, 2020; Morales & Andreosso-O’Callaghan, 2020; Ru et al., 2021).
Furthermore, the result of the test shows that the extent of the relationship between the variables is weak because .003 is less than .005 which is the alpha value. In other words, the framing of COVID-19 stories by selected Nigerian newspapers had relatively less impact on public adherence to the government’s COVID-19 containment policy. In another way, that a newspaper frames stories such as COVID-19 to suit their editorial policy or house style does not mean it will have appreciable influence on the public to follow all instructions or information contained thereon.
This shows clearly that there were other intervening/lurking/extraneous variables (such as the experience of others who died during the pandemic, enforcement of lockdown policy, social distancing, etc.) which could have made people adhere to the government’s containment policy. These findings also corroborate the active audience theory that implies that media audiences are no more gullible. They have the self-rightening minds to make a decision based on their volition. On this note, we accept the alternative hypothesis that says there is a correlation between Newspapers’ framing of COVID-19 stories and public adherence to the government’s containment policy and reject the null hypothesis.
Hypothesis 2
The analysis shows that the relationship between the volume of newspaper coverage of COVID-19 stories and public perception on the importance of the government containment policy is a weak correlation (.02). A critical look at the strength of the relationship between the 2 variables is weak and low because .02 is lesser than .05 which stands as the alpha value. In other words, the volume of newspaper coverage on the COVID-19 containment policy does not necessarily mean that it would make the public perceive it as important for them to adhere to such policy. The result of these findings provokes these questions, did Nigerians read the newspaper at all during the pandemic? Which media platform were Nigerians exposed to more during and after the COVID-19 pandemic?
Judgment and Test of Hypothesis: From the analysis, it is evident that the calculated value (.312) is higher than the Alpha value for correlation analysis which is .05. Hence, the alternate hypothesis is rejected and the null hypothesis accepted, which states that the volume of newspaper coverage of COVID-19 stories does not affect public perception on the importance of the government containment policy on the disease. This clearly shows that perception and reality are two separate phenomena. In reality, the Nigerian newspapers selected for this study did well in terms of coverage based on the volume recorded, however, the test of hypothesis could not confirm that the volume translated into public acceptance and adherence to the containment policy. In other words, perception is selective but reality is generic.
That the newspapers did well in reportage is not the case here, of course, they did, looking at the volume of coverage but that did not translate into meaningful influence on the public. This finding refutes studies by Apuke and Omar (2021a) and Aderogba (2021) which claimed that the volume of coverage by Nigerian newspapers during the pandemic had a significant influence on public adherence to government containment measures. These scholars may not be far from reality, as perception and reality are two different entities but it should be noted that other intervening variables could have affected the outcome of these findings and further studies could be conducted to determine them.
Conclusion
This study focused mainly on public perception and newspaper framing of COVID-19 stories, as survey methods were used to answer the research question set for the study. Data show that the Nigerian newspapers did not do badly in terms of coverage volume but the test of hypothesis does not confirm the relationship between volume, public perception and adherence to the COVID-19 government containment policy. This finding was further confirmed in the test of the hypothesis earlier which made use of the Pearson correlation statistical test. The study tested two hypotheses derived from the research question which examines if there is any connection between Nigerian newspaper framing of COVID-19 stories and public perception and the decision to adhere to government containment policy during the pandemic. In this, the Null hypothesis was accepted because the relationship between the variables examined could not be established. However, further research could be carried out through Key Informant Interviews (KII) which could be used to find out the challenges the press went through in their coverage of the pandemic. It was assumed based on data generated from this study that many reports in the newspapers caused untoward panic and fear in the minds of the public. A study such as this would bring to the fore balance and make the public to also be aware of the risks the press also faced in the cause of carrying out their duties during the pandemic. Above all, the limitation of this study is that it adopted a linear approach by critically examining how the press performed in the coverage of the pandemic without considering the associated risks and challenges they faced during the coverage. Adopting a multi-dimensional approach in future studies would give more credence and balance to a study such as this. Media owners and the government would be fully aware that there are risks that are associated with journalism practice globally. Identified limitations notwithstanding, the Nigerian media, most especially the press have proven to be partners in the nation’s desire for sustainable development, as they are read to provide services to support any government policy if such would benefit the public.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank Landmark University Centre for Research and Innovation (LUCRID) for their investment in research engagement of this nature over the years. The center’s support in the process of this work is exemplary.
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Authors’ Contributions
All authors conceived the paper’s idea, sourced materials for the literature, designed the methodology and wrote the article together diligently.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article: This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors but was supported by Landmark University Center for Research and Innovation (LUCRID).
Data Availability and Sharing Policy
Data in this study can be made available or shared.