This study attempts to quantify the coverage of Nigeria and the attitudes toward that country expressed by the United States press. It also attempts to answer the question of whether the press framed the content of its Nigerian stories in terms of U.S. political and social ideals. The study is based on a content analysis of news of Nigeria published in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, and The Miami Herald. / The news stories of the four newspaper were randomly sampled during the periods between October 1, 1960 and October 31, 1979. A total of 62 news stories were recorded in the four newspapers. / The measuring instrument for the study was designed: (1)To determine the amount of coverage given to Nigeria. This included comparing the news stories over time periods and comparing the coverage of Nigeria by the newspapers in terms of number of stories, trends followed, space covered, and the type of coverage. (2)To determine the attitude of the press toward Nigerian newsmakers (Was the story favorable, unfavorable, or neutral toward the referent?). Using a two stage coding procedure the stories were submitted to raters for evaluation. The raters identified the newsmakers and the direction and intensity of attitudes expressed toward them. / The following results were found: The Nigerian coverage in American papers was much higher during the Nigerian Civil War than during any other period. The New York Times printed more news stories, by far, on Nigeria and devoted more space to that country than any of the other three newspapers. / The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and The Chicago Tribune wrote more hard news on Nigeria than The Miami Herald, but The New York Times and The Miami Herald printed more feature stories than the other papers. The four newspapers did not follow the same trend in coverage across the total time period. The similarity between the papers occured during the Civil War when they all showed an increase in their coverage of Nigeria, followed by a decline after the Civil War. / The space devoted to the Nigerian news in the four newspapers was scarcely enough to inform the American readership of significant developments in Nigeria. / The foreign newsmakers who were concerned primarily with humanitarian, economic, and political matters and Nigerian Ibos and Ibo institutions were the entities most covered in the four newspapers. / A majority of foreign individuals and institutions and some of the Nigerians who were covered in the reported events that included participation of foreign nationals were treated favorably by the four newspapers. / Nothing was repoted on United States dependence on Nigerian oil, arousing a speculation that the United States press was not sensitized to the oil problem or was not partisan in its reporting because of it. / Results show in part, that American ideals and interests sometimes seemed to influence the way the four newspapers treated and covered Nigerian affairs. But the general finding of the study was that the United States press did not always report Nigerian news in terms of its relationship to American ideals and interests. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 42-03, Section: A, page: 0911. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1981.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_74413 |
| Contributors | MOHAMMED, UMAR., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 158 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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