Content Analysis of Agricultural Information Dissemination by the Indigenous Language and National Print Media in Nigeria: Implications for Effective Communication

Abstract

The study conducted content analysis of indigenous and national newspapers (NP) published between 2014 and 2015 with respect to agricultural information disseminated to stakeholders in agriculture. Both purposive and stratified sampling technique was used to select Akede and Alaroye as the indigenous and the Nation and Punch as NPs because of their popularity and coverage in Nigeria. A total of 384 newspapers were used for this study. Results showed that the newspapers featured less of agricultural related information despite the fact that the available agricultural information was carried in form of hard news (5.7% and 81.7%), features (7.3% and 91.7%), photography (4.7% and 50.0%), opinion issues (2.1% and 64.1%), and advertisement (1.6% and 56.2%) for indigenous language and national newspapers respectively. Also, information such as employment in agriculture-related (4.7% and 52.6%), health issues related to agriculture (6.2% and 53.1%), crop production (5.7% and 52.1%), animal husbandry (4.7% and 51.6%)for indigenous language and national newspapers respectively among others were the commonly featured news. Only 6.8% and 80.2% of the indigenous and National newspapers allotted column inches ranging from 0.00-7.0 to agriculture. About 6,8% and 60.4% and 4.7% and 58.9% of indigenous language and national NPs targeted the general audience and Male farmer for disseminating agricultural information. Significant difference existed in the agriculture information featured between the indigenous and national newspapers with an F-test value of 44.882 at p= 0.01; indicating that national newspapers featured agricultural news more than the indigenous ones.  It was recorded that limited space was allocated to the few available information on agriculture in the sampled newspapers. It was concluded that agricultural news were not adequately disseminated in the dailies especially the local dailies that farmers mostly have access to. It was recommended that agriculture-related information should be published on the platforms where the target audience can access for effective communication