MY CANDIDATE IS THE ONLY MAN FOR THE JOB’: AN ANALYSIS OF THE 2015 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION CAMPAIGNS IN SELECTED NEWSPAPERS ADS

Abstract: The 2015 Presidential election will go down as one of the fiercely and keenly contested in Nigeria's history owing to the margin of victory as pronounced by the INEC. Critical among issues that characterized the electioneering was the media campaigns embarked upon by the two leading parties/candidates, namely the All Peoples’ Congress (Muhammadu Buhari) and the Peoples’ Democratic Party (Goodluck Jonathan). During this period, the two campaign organizations of these political parties and candidates utilized the media, both print and electronic, as propaganda tool to attack the personalities of each other; where vile language was used. This study sought to assess the content of selected Nigerian newspapers in respect to advertisements made by the two key political parties. A quantitative research method was used to content analyse advertisements from three (3) Nigerian dailies where a sample size of 26 ads was purposively drawn within a period of three months (January – March). Findings revealed that newspaper adverts focused more on hate speech and personality destruction rather than issues. Dominant frames in the ads revolves around morality, responsibility and economic consequences. The paper concluded that newspaper advertisements were not neutral and the media became the fueling agent of war among the candidates. As recommendation, researcher, among others, avers the need for social responsibility on the side of the media to the extent that political campaigns that contain unnecessary content should not be published.

Keywords: Political campaigns, newspapers, hate speech, issue-based campaigns, and social responsibility.

Published: November 2017

Issue: Vol 1 (2) 2017: PLASU JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION STUDIES