AN ASSESSMENT OF THE IMPACT OF MASS MEDIA ON THE IMPLEMENTATION OF NIGERIA’S VISION 20:2020. JOAN TIRWYN FAJEMISIN A thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of Ph.D. Degree. Department of English and Media Faculty of Arts, Law and Social Sciences, Anglia Ruskin University. December, 2018 Acknowledgements This journey has been full of hurdles from the very beginning. It started as a pursuit of academic excellence, which I was hopeful will guide my career part, little did I know I will end up engulfed and accompanied by other baggage- health, emotional and financial. To the glory of God, the journey ended in praise. On this note, I give God Almighty the glory for giving me the strength to persevere to the very end. My special appreciation to Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND) for part-funding this research, three years into the programme. Also, my special appreciation to Anglia Ruskin University’s finance office for availing me a stress-free tuition fee payment plan. This relieved me of a lot of pressure. My parents, for their prayers, advice and support, and for believing in my ability to deliver. I hope I made you proud. Thank you for being wonderful Grandparents to my son; for taking care of him and instilling good virtues while I was away pursuing this cap. Further appreciation to my siblings- Dorothy, Stephen, Judith and Elizabeth, for their love, prayers, encouragement and support. May God keep this bond. To Dr. Sarah Barrow, my M.A. Supervisor, thank you for believing in my ability to conduct research of this magnitude and for recommending me to be admitted on this programme. To the members of my research supervisory team: Dr. Sean Campbell, Dr. Shaun LeBoutillier, Dr. Joss Hands and Dr. Mareike Jenner; thank you for directing this journey and for your excellent supervision. Thank you even more for being considerate when I was down and consumed by health challenges and other personal problems. To my research support team: Dr. Tiainen Milla, Dr. Paul Rhys, Helen Jones, Sarah Briggs and Brigita Mileryte, I appreciate your individual support. I cannot forget to appreciate my Head of Department, Prof. Farah Mendelsohn, who was kind enough to grant approval for my former First Supervisor, Joss Hands, to remain in the team as an Adviser and for approving my application for waver of Writing Up fee. To my External and Internal Examiners, Dr. Eugenia Siapera & Dr. David Skinner, thank you for finding this thesis worthy of an award of Doctor of Philosophy. I’m most grateful and my joy knows no bound. I’m not forgetting Brigita Mileryte, for attending to all my complaints and processing my requests for extension, accordingly. Your support is much appreciated, Brigita. To my research colleagues, Dr. Ejindu Morah, Dr. Anderson Odigie, Ian Pinchen, Dr. Arun Yadda, Dr. Joshua Agbor, Dr. Taiwo Conde and Emmanuel Obiku; I appreciate your constructive criticisms. My friends and professional colleagues: Dr. Benjamin Gugong, for the support and encouragement; Linda Nwoke and Abdullahi Doki, for the feedback on the thesis; Gyong Emmanuel, for assisting with data gathering and analysis; Bayo Atunrase, for retrieving the questionnaire; I appreciate your contributions. To Mr. Olajide Asaolu, Misol Gapsuk Kangkum, Linda Danladi and Adeyinka Adebola; I appreciate your friendship, support and encouragement. Finally, to my son, Germaine, for not being by your side each morning throughout the course of this programme. I know I may not be able to make up for each of the nights you went to bed and woke up without cuddles from Mum. I still feel some sense of guilt, you know! But hey, God heals such a scar and I pray He listens and heals mine. You are loved, Son. This is for you! i ANGLIA RUSKIN UNIVERSITY ABSTRACT FACULTY OF ARTS, LAW AND SOCIAL SCIENCES DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY THE IMPACT OF MASS MEDIA ON THE IMPLEMENTATION OF NIGERIA’S VISION 20:2020 JOAN TIRWYN FAJEMISIN November, 2018 The study examines first, second and third level agenda setting role of the media (the agenda setting process) in the implementation of Nigeria’s Vision 20:2020 in the context of the media as a public sphere and assesses the agenda-setting process across the three normative agendas: media, public and policy. Specifically, the salience of the Vision; the tone of news; the type of news; the source of news; the manifest attributes and the agenda setting process. The study employed pragmatism and mixed methods research approach to study four Nigerian daily newspapers- ThisDay, The Punch, The Nation and Vanguard, purposively selected and studied over a three-year period 2010, 2011, 2012 using content analysis. At the same time, a survey of twenty-five Journalists from Nigerian main stream media was conducted. It was found that the issue is salient in the media with 134 articles across the four newspapers. This is a confirmation of first level agenda setting. The study also revealed that all cognitive attributes of the Vision are salient in the media with varying impacts. Furthermore, the study adjudges the efficacy of third level agenda setting in the implementation of the Vision based on the salience of each of the attributes and how all the attributes network in ensuring the transfer of salience from the media to the public agenda. This completes the agenda setting process in a single study. Interestingly, the tone of news revealed conflicting results. While the content analysis revealed mostly positive tones, the survey result revealed negative perception of the Vision. These conflicting results are attributed to Mellado and Lagos’s reporter/sources bias in news (interventionist dimension) and reporter’s neutrality and distance from the fact (disseminator- interventionist dimension), respectively. The study also found that the Nigerian media system, from pre-colonial to present day, possess features of different models of media systems. Specifically, Authoritarianism, Social Responsibility, Libertarianism, Political Parallelism, Instrumentalism, Media Market and State Control define the Nigerian media system. While race as a variable, is not a determining variable of the Nigerian media system owing to the monoracial nature of the country. The study concludes and recommends the adoption of ‘agenda setting process’ as the most suitable theoretical approach in any study that assesses the impact of the media in the implementation of an all-encompassing development plan anywhere in the world, but such a study should be country-specific due to the peculiarity of each nation-state in terms of the differences in media system, type of government, economic, political and socio-cultural factors. Keywords: Agenda-Setting Process, Public Sphere, Vision 20:2020, Nigeria Media System. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgement------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- i Abstract------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ii Table of Content--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- iii Copyright Declaration--------------------------------------------------------------------------------- vi Chapter One 1.1 Introduction------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1 1.2 Evidenced-based Role of the Mass Media in Development---------------------------- 3 1.3 The Vision 202020 plan at a glance-------------------------------------------------------- 8 1.4 Statement of the problem-------------------------------------------------------------------- 11 1.5 Objective of the Study & Research Questions ------------------------------------------- 17 1.6 Theoretical framework----------------------------------------------------------------------- 17 1.7 Organisation of the research ---------------------------------------------------------------- 19 Chapter Two Theoretical and Conceptual Clarification I-------------------------------------------------- 22 2.0 The public sphere and mass media in a democratic society------------------------------ 22 2.1 Introduction ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 22 2.2 On Why the Public Sphere as Theoretical Framework ----------------------------------- 23 2.3 The Public Sphere------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 26 2.4 The components/dialectics of the public sphere------------------------------------------- 34 2.5 The criticisms and decline of the public sphere-------------------------------------------- 35 2.6 The ideal functions of mass media in a democratic society------------------------------ 46 2.7 Criticisms of the mass media as a public sphere------------------------------------------- 50 2.8 Reflection --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 56 Chapter Three 3.0 Agenda setting in the mediated public sphere-------------------------------------------- 58 3.1 Introduction ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 58 3.2 Importance of agenda setting --------------------------------------------------------------- 63 3.3 What is agenda setting? --------------------------------------------------------------------- 66 3.4 The tripartite component of agenda setting: policy, public and media agendas ----- 67 3.4.1 The policy agenda---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 68 3.4.2 The public agenda ----------------------------------------------------------------------------