Environmental Journalism in Nigeria: Representation of Climate Change in Nigeria

Climate change, which can be described as a change in the average weather condition over a period of time, has become a serious problem in the 21st century. The result and impacts of climate change are reported to be severe and harsh, this includes flood, famine, drought, etc. It is regarded as one of the most serious environmental issues, thus there is a need to create maximum awareness about it. The media as an important source of information has a part to play in creating the needed awareness for the public. Through media coverage of climate change, the public learns and understands the phenomenon and how to mitigate its effects. How the media frame climate change issue is important to how the citizens will react to the situation. Hence, this study examines how the Nigerian newspapers frame and present the climate change issue. Adopting a quantitative content analysis, this study analyzed n=303 news articles published between January 1, 2015, and December 31, 2019, in four newspapers; Punch, Vanguard, Guardian, and ThisDay Newspaper. The findings of this study suggest that there are two most commonly used themes by the newspapers to present climate change issues. These two themes were the “effects” and “mitigation” themes. The study also found that as regards the use of tone in the newspapers’ presentation, a negative tone was most used. This is as a result of the dominant frame “effect frame” used in the reports. Similarly, this study found that the majority of the climate change issue was reported as straight news and the source of the news is largely the reporters themselves. The study concluded that climate change is not given enough attention by the Nigerian media which is at the detriment of the country and its citizens. This study recommended that Nigerian media should bestow equal attention given to political issues in the country should also be attached to the climate change issue. Lastly, the media should employ the use of adaptation frame more, this is due to the economic conditions of the country. Keywords: climate change, environmental journalism, media analysis, news content, Nigerian press