Abstract

The role of mass media in setting public agenda, shaping understanding and assigning varied degrees of importance to issues, is an immense and well documented area of communication research. However, there have been divergent schools of thought among communication scholars and public health leaders regarding the effectiveness of mass media in achieving behaviour change objectives. This study examined how the mass media covered the Ebola disease outbreak in Nigeria in order to determine: whether the media set Ebola as a public health agenda; how the media framed the Ebola outbreak news; and whether the media provided enough education on Ebola for the public. A total of 861 editions of seven homogenous newspapers (Daily Trust, The Punch, The Sun, ThisDay, The Guardian, Tribune and Vanguard) published in Nigeria between July 1 and October 31, 2014 constituted the population for the study. A sample of 15% (133 newspapers) of the population was chosen and systematic sampling was adopted to determine the exact issue dates of the sampled newspapers. Contents were analysed for prominence, frequency, tone and framing of Ebola disease outbreak. Findings showed that 994 health related issues were published during the study period of which 53% (530) was on Ebola or associated with it while 47% was on other health issues. Most of the news items published were news stories (74%); followed by feature stories 17%.  Majority of the news items were merely informative (61%); but 10% was educative.

Key Words:  Ebola, Public Health, Mass Media, Agenda Setting, Prominence, Framing.

* Chima Emmanuel Onuekwe, Ph.D. is a Health Communication & Promotion Specialist at the World Health Organisation, Syrian Arab Republic.

^JCMR Journal  of  Communication and Media Research, Vol. 9, No. 2, October  2017, 14 – 28