Return to search

Investigation into HIV/AIDS coverage in selected South African newspapers

This study investigates HIV/AIDS coverage in selected South African newspapers. The rationale for the study hinges on the fact that the media’s role in informing society about social issues, such as HIV/AIDS, is of paramount importance. The study adopted, principally, the content analysis method and, as a supplement, discourse analysis. Four daily newspapers were content-analysed, namely: Daily Dispatch, Daily Sun, Sowetan and The Star. A total of 288 editions of newspapers, spanning a period of twelve months (January to December 2010) were sampled. This study is informed by agenda setting theory. Discourse analysis was used to determine the compliance of these newspapers to media guides on the use of appropriate language or terminologies. The tone, sentence structures used when disseminating HIV/AIDS stories were also examined. The results revealed that HIV/AIDS coverage by these newspapers is reasonable even though the prominence given to HIV/AIDS issues is dissatisfactory in terms of placement on the page, headline font-size and number of paragraphs devoted to HIV/AIDS stories. 5.0% of HIV/AIDS-oriented stories were placed on the front page; 93.8% on the inside pages while 1.3% were placed on the back pages. It was also found that news and feature were used equally to disseminate HIV/AIDS issues. These genres constituted 50% each. On the other hand, the results revealed a statistically non-significant relationship between the newspapers and categories; that is: (25.09 2   , p  0.122  0.05 ). Results further revealed that these newspapers used appropriate terminology and value-neutral language in their stories. The tone of the messages was found to be positive and encouraging.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:ufh/vital:11367
Date January 2013
CreatorsMoqasa, Nketsi Abel
PublisherUniversity of Fort Hare, Faculty of Social Sciences & Humanities
Source SetsSouth African National ETD Portal
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis, Masters, M Soc Sc (Com)
Format167 leaves; 30 cm, pdf
RightsUniversity of Fort Hare

Page generated in 0.0024 seconds