Understanding the Rudiments of Media Research Methodology: Content Analysis of Daily Trust, a Nigerian Daily Newspaper

Abstract

Newspaper journalism is a vast area of research that has gained much attention from academics and media industry. Because of the immense contribution of media to social, economic, political and cultural development to societies, understanding the links and impacts of media and media content on audiences and the polity has been stressed. Democracy has been shown to be a means to an end, and public opinion and participation are invariably shown to affect and be affected by democracy and media content. By its unique characteristics (private ownership, less state influence, greater independence, ability to criticize the state, etc.) newspaper has been shown to influence government and public agenda and set agenda for broadcast and online media. One of the popular methodological approaches adopted in media agenda-setting research is content analysis. Based on the Agenda-Setting theory, this paper employed a quantitative content analysis approach to provide an understanding about the content of Daily Trust newspaper (a Nigerian national daily) in order to provide some guidance on the practical skills and theoretical knowledge about content analysis both as a methodology and theoretical framework for the benefits of postgraduate media content analysis students and researchers. The findings showed that pictures, headlines and news stories were the dominant units of analysis while politics (democracy, governance and party politics) religion and crisis (ethno-religious crises issues surrounding the herdsmen-farmers conflict) were the dominant content categories. Daily Trust newspaper should continue embracing development and peace journalism trend of journalism.