| Abstract: |
Cartoons are humorous illustrations that communicate serious
societal issues through caricature and satire. This study
examined newspaper cartoon framing of the 2023 presidential
election in Nigeria, focusing on four national dailies: Daily
Sun, Vanguard, The Guardian and Punch. Anchored on agenda
setting, social responsibility and framing theories, the study
adopted the content analysis method to investigate the
frequency, direction, dominant frames and prominence of
placement of cartoons depicting the three leading candidates:
Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress, Atiku
Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party, and Peter Obi of
the Labour Party. Using the composite week sampling
technique, 252 editions were drawn from a population of 1,096
editions published between July 2022 and March 2023, and
analysed with a validated coding sheet and coding guide that
returned an inter-coder reliability coefficient of 0.78. Findings
show that only 44 cartoon items appeared across the sampled
editions, indicating a generally low frequency of cartoon
usage, with Tinubu attracting the highest share (52%) of
cartoon coverage. The overall direction of the cartoons was
predominantly unfavourable (68%), while corruption (32%)
and fake promises (23%) emerged as the dominant frames.
Most cartoons (64%) were placed on editorial pages rather than
front or back pages. The study concludes that Nigerian
newspapers under-utilise cartoons as a tool of political
communication and recommends that editors increase the
frequency and front-page prominence of political cartoons, and
that political actors address the corruption and unfulfilled
promises that dominate public perception of Nigerian
elections. |
