Analysis of news photographs used by Nigerian newspaper to report terror acts

What is it about?

News editors have an ethical responsibility in selecting photographs to frame news stories. This is because the nature of photographs selected by a news editor to tell a news story plays a major role in how audience interpret and react to the news story. To establish this in the Nigerian context, we did a critical visual analysis of photographs that news editors of Nigerian newspapers selected and used to frame news stories about acts of terrorism by the Boko Haram Sect. Our study shows that while reporting news about terror attacks by the Boko Haram, news editors of the selected Nigerian newspapers chose photographs with less offensive contents that are less likely to evoke a negative emotional response.

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Why is it important?

We did a critical analysis of photographs that news editors of Nigerian newspapers select to frame news stories about terror attacks by the Boko Haram (a terrorist sect in the northern part of Nigeria). One significant finding is that news editors of the selected newspapers used euphemistic pictures that downplay the intensity of violence or terror reported in the respective news stories.

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