In countries like Nigeria and similar contexts in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, maternal deaths remain prevalent and the current political will and corresponding interventions remain insufficient to significantly address the problem. One way of generating the required political priority is through the mass media, which has been credited with the capacity to influence social and political conversations and set the policy agenda by raising the salience of an issue on its own agenda. This study investigates the processes and factors which influence the media agenda for maternal mortality and comparatively, HIV/AIDS in Nigeria. It utilizes content and frame analysis of newspaper coverage to establish the media agenda for both issues. It also utilises in-depth, semi-structured interviews: 1) with NGOs and other advocates to determine the factors which influence the state of maternal health and source strategies for media engagement; and 2) with senior reporters and health editors, to investigate the factors which influence the media agenda for health issues especially maternal mortality and HIV/AIDS. The results show that the state of maternal health in Nigeria has been influenced by epidemiological factors, cultural and religious factors, gender and socio economic class and strategic factors such as donor politics and priorities. Content analysis of newspaper coverage indicate that news coverage of maternal mortality is significantly low, when benchmarked against HIV/AIDS and that a wider range of framing approaches (including a political and multi-disciplinary approach) are employed in coverage of the latter, compared to the former. The study results also suggest that most maternal health advocates do not take a strategic approach to media engagement and that there is poor collaboration and lack of trust between NGOs and the media. Interviews with media personnel show that that the lack of trust and collaboration between the media and NGOs has resulted in a lack of stakeholding, and media engagement is largely at the level of events reporting. In addition to the above, the results show that the media agenda is predominantly driven by funding, political issue champions, celebrities, expert sources, epidemiology, global health days, events, and human interest stories.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:629815 |
| Date | January 2014 |
| Creators | Agbonkhese, Racheal |
| Publisher | Cardiff University |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://orca.cf.ac.uk/65790/ |
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