A Critical Discourse Analysis of selected Newspaper Stories on the 2015 Nigerian Presidential Campaign
No Thumbnail Available
Date
2017-01
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Addis Ababa University
Abstract
This study attempts to analyze the discourses embedded in the news reports that a prominent Nigerian newspaper called The Nation published about the 2015 Nigerian presidential election. The news reports that have been analyzed are those published in the month before the presidential election’s date of May 28, 2015. The analysis is done by applying Critical Discourse Analysis to the newspaper reports. The analytical part begins with the exploration of the informative content of the news reports. The reports cover stories on the presidential election, the political campaign, the political parties and their respective candidates. All the news reports published by the online edition of the daily newspaper in the period under investigation were retrieved first, in order to create the repository of the reports relevant for this research. According to the findings of this study, The Nation played a very important role during the presidential campaign by consistently disseminating information aimed at shaping public opinion in support of presidential candidate Muhammadu Buhari.
Description
Keywords
Presidential Campaign