COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF NEWSPAPER COVERAGE OF ELECTRICITY
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COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF NEWSPAPER COVERAGE OF ELECTRICITY
Chapter one
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the Study.
Providing developing countries with access to clean and sustainable energy is one of the world’s most pressing energy concerns today. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA) (2010), around 1.4 billion people worldwide lacked access to electricity in 2008, with 587 million living in Sub-Saharan Africa. The majority of these folks reside in rural areas.
The lack of access to electricity is a significant hurdle to reaching the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). For example, to achieve universal primary education, educational facilities require electricity for teaching aids and good lighting for reading in homes;
to reduce child mortality and improve maternal health, health facilities require refrigerators to preserve drugs and vaccines, as well as electricity for proper lighting to deliver services effectively.
According to Meisen and Akin (2008), there is a strong link between annual per capita power usage and the Human Development Index. The governments of these countries have the Herculean job of improving the population’s living standards by providing access to electricity, which drives economic activity.
The scenario is similar in Nigeria. In 2008, around 53% of Nigerians lacked access to electricity (WHO/UNDP, 2009), but the situation varies greatly between geopolitical zones. It has been noticed that the absence of electrical access is particularly severe in the northern areas of Nigeria, with the North-East geopolitical zone accounting for 71.6%.
In addition, the North-East geopolitical zone lags behind other zones in terms of socioeconomic indices like as literacy, access to health care, maternal mortality, and access to clean water (UNFPA, 2008). Given the importance of electricity availability to a country’s socioeconomic growth at both the micro and macro levels, the Nigerian government set an 80% power coverage objective for 2015 in the Roadmap to Power Sector Reforms (Jonathan, 2010).
As the electrical service has been privatised, providing electricity to these rural residents necessitates the construction of transmission and distribution lines to reach the communities. However, extending a transmission and distribution line is capital expensive, thus it is only considered when it is cost-effective.
Furthermore, most rural communities have dispersed settlement patterns, and rural residents are low-income, requiring electricity only for basic needs such as cooking, lighting, refrigeration, entertainment, and powering small-scale agro-based businesses and other enterprises such as soap making, tailoring, hairdressing, weaving, and so on.
Thus, extending the grid will result in poor capacity utilisation due to low demand. Because private companies are typically motivated by profit maximisation, they may be unwilling to expand the distribution network to these rural regions because it would be an unprofitable investment.
This condition raises the possibility of giving power access in some of these rural communities through off-grid electrification. According to the World Bank (2008), off-grid electrification is typically considered when giving electrical access to tiny rural communities that are far from the current system, have dispersed settlement patterns, and earn modest incomes.
Off-grid electrification has similar benefits to grid extension in terms of raising the standard of living and encouraging the formation of micro-enterprises that boost overall economic benefit, despite the lower available electricity.
According to Foley (1990), the benefits of off-grid electrification include the pumping of water in the village and farming settings, as well as the provision of power for heating, lighting, and cooking, all of which are needs of life for rural inhabitants.
Off-grid models can be implemented using a variety of technical choices, including biomass, wind, hydro, solar power, or a mix of the two (Kerridge et al., 2008). The application of any technology is dependent on the domestic resources available.
Communities near rivers are prone to use micro hydropower plants, while communities with strong solar irradiation are likely to employ solar energy.
1.2 Statement of Problem
Erratic electricity supply continues to be a serious issue in Nigeria, impacting the country’s socioeconomic well-being. In comparison to recent technology developments, Nigeria continues to use outdated, clunky technologies and processes.
As a result, the study aims to examine the issues that nations face when it comes to providing electricity to different sectors. It also intends to examine the reporting of the two national daily
The Daily Trust and Leadership Newspapers, on the impact of power supply on the Nigerian economy, educational institutions, and health-care delivery.
1.3 Research objectives
The study’s aims are as follows:
1. Determine how frequently Daily Trust and Leadership publications have carried news about the impact of power on the Nigerian economy.
2. Determine the extent to which Daily Trust and Leadership carry news on the influence of electricity on institutions of learning.
3. Determine the level of attention paid to news coverage about the influence of electricity on health care delivery.
1.4 Research Questions.
The following research question is derived from the aforementioned aims.
1. How often do the Daily Trust and Leadership publications report on the impact of power on the Nigerian economy?
2. To what extent have the two media highlighted electricity’s impact on educational institutions?
3. How much attention have the two newspapers paid to news coverage about the influence of electricity on health care delivery?
1.5 Significance of the Study
The media helps to disseminate knowledge to citizens of specific societies; this is also the job that mass media serves in Nigeria. According to McQuail (2002), mass media is a large-scale mode of communication that reaches and involves nearly everyone in a society, to varying degrees. The mass media, particularly the print ‘newspaper’, plays an important role in informing citizens about the power sector in the country.
The researcher likes to highlight newspaper coverage of the national power industry. Mass media, particularly print newspapers, play an important role in alerting citizens about the country’s power sector issues.
Mass media, as a vehicle of communication, has remained one of the platforms for transmitting messages across cultures and ways of life to Nigeria’s relatively vast, diverse, and anonymous readership.
This study is important to Nigerian society because it will enable Nigerian mass media play its part in promoting the communication sector. It will also reveal the reasons why journalists should place more emphasis on their job in order to achieve specific goals.
1.6 Purpose of the Study
The purpose of this study is to investigate the role of print media in the power sector, specifically newspapers. It is critical for the media to show more concern for government power sector policy in order to impact local economic development, strategies and measures adopted to resolve problems, and potential pathways to reviving Nigeria’s electricity sector.
The researcher likes to highlight newspaper coverage of the national power industry.
1.7 Scope of Study
The research focusses on the influence of electricity on the Nigerian economy as reported in the Daily Trust and Leadership newspapers. The coverage spans January to May 2015.
1.8 Definition of Key Terms.
Newspaper: A newspaper is a collection of folded printed sheets of paper that are published on a regular basis, usually daily or weekly, in order to circulate news.
Coverage: The amount of attention given to an event or topic by newspapers, radio, and television in their reports.
Electricity is a type of kinetic or potential energy produced by the free or regulated movement of charged particles such as electrons, positrons, and metals.
Watchdog of the Society: This term refers to the media as a watchdog for society in the sense that it serves as the fourth realm arm of government, acting as a mediator between the public and the government.
Media: This term refers to all media technologies that use mass communication to reach a huge number of people, such as television, radio, the internet, newspapers, and magazines.
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