JOURNALISM PRACTICE IN AN ERA OF UNGUIDED UTTERANCES

FRAMING OF HATE SPEECH IN SELECTED NIGERIAN NEWSPAPERS

Abstract

This study investigated newspaper framing of hate speech in Nigeria. In doing so, attention was paid to the sources of hate speech as well as the framing of hate speech using three broad frames namely supportive, critical and neutral frames. The researcher also focused on three broad areas that often manifest in hate speeches. They are politics, religion and ethnicity. Content analysis was used for the study while a  total of four newspaper-the Punch, Vanguard, Leadership and Daily Trust were sampled for the study which duration was three years. The result showed that politicians and their supporters usually make hate speeches most while newspaper framing of hate speech is determined by the issue involved. Consequently, it was found that while newspapers are likely to frame political hate speech using a critical frame, a support frame is used to frame religious hate speech and neutral frame for ethnicity hate speech. Based on the result of this study, the researcher recommends, among others,  that newspapers should adopt critical frame in framing hate speech relating to ethnicity as the use of neutral frames may divide the country along ethnic line.