Third International Conference on Communication & Media Studies

Abstract

The concept of framing of news conveys the ideological nature of news and the use of media as propaganda machinery in political communication. Thus, radio news is being used to frame government agendas in the cultural diversity of Nigeria to meet certain agendas. This paper examines the critical discourse analysis of Radio Nigeria’s national news on cultural diversity in Nigeria, to identify the missing links in the unending ethnic, religious, and cultural conflicts in the Africa’s most populous country. It uses the “manufacturing consent” theory of Herman and Chomsky (1988) to observe the political economy nature of news framing. The study applies the five propaganda devices of the theory on Radio Nigeria news to measure how the news framing affects the nature of the ethnic conflicts. The paper concludes that the framing of the radio news has impact on the suspicions among the ethnic and religious groups in Nigeria.