Assessment of Frequency and Prominence of Guardian Newspaper Reportage of Coronavirus in Nigeria

Abstract

Nigeria Centre for Disease Control confirms that Coronavirus is a deadly disease and therefore deploys all known means to
contain the spread of the virus. Nigerians were not only alerted about the prevalence of the virus in the country, but they were
also warned to strictly adopt the measures put in place to stop its spread as the death tolls continue to rise astronomically all
over the world. The need to look into news reports of the virus also became a concern to researchers in the field of mass
th communication; hence, this paper assesses Guardian newspaper reportage of coronavirus in Nigeria between 28 February,
th 2020 and 27 January, 2021. The Guardian newspaper was selected being one of the oldest and most popular medium. The
quantitative research design is adopted with the content analysis approach used in examining the manifest contents of the
Guardian newspaper in addressing the research objectives. The study adopted the agenda-setting theory as its theoretical
framework. Findings showed that the Guardian newspaper published 215 (58.7%) newsprints daily between 27th February,
2020 and 28th January, 2021; and also 62 (17.0%) weekly; 65 (17.8%), bi-weekly; as well as 24 (6.5%) monthly more
frequently. The study also found out that the newspaper gave Coronavirus reportage prominence by publishing it in both front
and back pages. It also had more of hard news stories. The study recommended that newspapers should constantly cover and
report cases of Coronavirus in order to inform and educate the society, and also give importance to health issues especially
those of pandemics.