Abstract

Nigeria’s 2015 presidential election is arguably one in the annals of the country’s electoral odyssey which hatched heightened tension and manifest appeal to the international and domestic mass media. This riveted interest sprang up against the backdrop of the much publicized prediction by the United States of America on the probable break-up of the country by the year 2015. This paper therefore sought to study the coverage/framing employed by two re known global news leaders: Cable News Network (CNN) and Aljazeera in the build-up to the election and provides answers to queries relating to the relative directional focus and the distinctive approaches to the election coverage by the two media organizations. Tied to the umbilical cord of Erving Goffman’s frame theory and the utilization of content analysis as the preferred research method for the study, it applied the purposive sampling technique in selecting the two international media. Inter coder reliability was 0.54. Interpretation of data involved both qualitative and quantitative traditions. Findings revealed that the country was principally represented in unfavourable light and in such frame by both networks but with a higher percentage credited to CNN.

Key Words: News Frames, News Framing, Agenda Setting, Election, News Coverage.

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*Itieke-Idamieba Harry is a Lecturer, Department of Mass Communication, Rivers State University of Science and Technology, Nkpolu-Oroworukwo, Port Harcourt, Nigeria.

**Abigail Chidinma Nwaucha was a Former Research Assistant, Department of Mass Communication, Rivers State University of Science and Technology, Nkpolu-Oroworukwo, Port Harcourt, Nigeria.

^JCMRJournal of Communication and Media Research, Vol. 9, No. 1, April  2017, 138 – 148