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In media we trust versus the media we trust: information subsidies and credibility of editorial content in Nigerian newspapers

The mass media serve as the forum for public discussions, political debates and the forging of consensus. However, it has been argued that media efforts to engage, empower and educate audiences are puny owing to several factors such as excessive reliance on public relations contents and well-funded...

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Published: 2020-04
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LEADER 00000njm a2000000a 4500
001 oai:repository.ui.edu.ng:123456789/5709
042 |a dc 
720 |a Ojebuyi, B. R.  |e author 
720 |a Adekoya, O. F.  |e author 
260 |c 2020-04 
520 |a The mass media serve as the forum for public discussions, political debates and the forging of consensus. However, it has been argued that media efforts to engage, empower and educate audiences are puny owing to several factors such as excessive reliance on public relations contents and well-funded agendas that dominate the media space. Media Studies in many countries have confirmed the growing reliance of journalists on Public Relations (PR) materials—also called information subsidy—but studies in Nigeria have not investigated this phenomenon and its implications for media gatekeeping and agenda-setting functions. The current study was designed to fill this gap. Agenda-setting and Gatekeeping media theories were employed as framework, while mixed methods design was adopted. From two Tier-1 newspapers (The Guardian and Punch), a total of 1,216 news stories drawn through constructed week sampling from 4-11 January 2016, the year the first Nigerian PR industry report was published, were content analysed. This study confirmed the growing reliance of Nigerian newspapers on information subsidy. This reliance on PR materials weakened the gatekeeping function of Nigerian newspapers, but did not undermine their agenda-setting function as the newspapers devoted their prominent pages (17%) to self-generated contents compared to the volume of materials PR (20.3%) confined to inner and less-prominent pages. 
024 8 |a 2141-5277 
024 8 |a ui_art_ojebuyi_in_2020 
024 8 |a Journal of Communication and Media Research 12(1), pp. 1-11 
024 8 |a http://ir.library.ui.edu.ng/handle/123456789/5709 
653 |a Information Subsidy 
653 |a Agenda Setting 
653 |a Editorial Content 
653 |a Nigerian Newspapers 
653 |a Media Trust 
245 0 0 |a In media we trust versus the media we trust: information subsidies and credibility of editorial content in Nigerian newspapers