Health emergency communication among newspapers in Nigeria: a study of The Punch, Daily Sun and Vanguard's coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

COVID-19 pandemic may have become a thing of the past, but it's impact has huge lessons that the world can learn from it. Health emergency communication preparedness among journalists is one issue that has attracted less investigation. The key objectives were to ascertain the frequency, depth and dominant tones used in reporting the pandemic. The study was anchored on the crisis emergency risk communication model (CERC). Content analysis was used as the research design, as the researchers content analysed sample size of 126 editions of The Punch, Daily Sun, and Vanguard Newspapers got through the Wimmer and Dominick's composite week Sampling technique. Findings revealed that the frequency with which COVID-19 issues were reported was high and impressive. Sufficient space was also accorded the pandemic. Regrettably, most of the reports were hash and alarming. Meaning that they only focused in reporting numbers of new cases, death rate and those in isolation centers. Not much reports focused on giving hope and making the people emotionally stable. Conclusively, Nigerian newspapers, despite their humongous coverage of the pandemic never used any health emergency communication guidelines in their Reportage. The study therefore recommends among others that Media practitioners should report health emergencies in a way to reassure the public about a possible solution and not just raising the alarms. This can only be achieved by a proper health emergency communication training among journalists.