ANALYSIS OF SELECT NEWSPAPERS' REPRESENTATION OF THE THREE MAJOR CANDIDATES IN THE FEBRUARY 25, 2023 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION IN NIGERIA

At the backdrop of the belief in the power of the media to influence peoples’ voting decisions during elections and in order to understand media impact on voter behavior in the February 25, 2023 presidential election in Nigeria, this study examines select newspapers’ representations of the three leading candidates in the 8 months period running up to the February 25, 2023 presidential election in Nigeria. Guided by the Agenda setting and Framing theories, the study used Content analysis design to achieve two objectives, namely: ascertain the dominant frames in the news stories and the purposes for which the newspapers covered the candidate’s vis a vis the election’s outcome. Using the composite week sampling technique and the systematic random sampling procedure, the study sourced 674 news stories from 200 samples obtained from a population of 1210 editions of five purposively selected newspapers. The newspapers include: This Day, Guardian, Punch, Sun, and Leadership newspapers. The study found that the newspapers represented the candidates using seven recurrent news frames, namely: ethnic, religious, political-support, good governance, economic recovery, corruption and problem-solution frames. While the presidential candidates of the APC and the PDP were majorly represented using ethnic, religious and political support frames, the candidate of the LP was represented using good governance, problem solution and economic recovery frames. The study also found that the newspapers’ purpose of coverage of the candidate of the APC placed high on political castigation, while that of PDP placed high on promotion/persuasion and political endorsement, and that of LP led in promotion/persuasion, information and education. The study concludes that although the newspapers gave the candidates adequate coverage and varied representation, the intended media impact was not absolute. For example, the media popularity of the candidate of the LP whose news stories were most informative and educative and who was the famously framed and represented using good governance, problem solution and economic recovery frames never reflected in the outcome of the election, as opposed to that of APC who was defamed and most negatively represented in ethnic and religious and corruption gabs. Media competed with pre-determined attitude of the voters and other social factors such as ethnicity, religion, and vote buying to influence voters’ behavior. The study recommends among others, that the media should always give unbiased representation to all candidates and be careful in their choices of news frames so as not to relegate the major issues to the background