Abstract—The reporting of crisis anywhere in the world has
certain elements in common with the reporting of other events.
In this paper, it is used as a definer for political, economic,
health and environmental crises. Crisis reporting could be
defined as the reporting of information about the state of affairs
in which a decisive change for the worse is about to, or has
occurred. Newspapers have a unique and exceptionally
important role to play in covering national crises. Accurate and
appropriate information about a crisis is an expectation that is
required if the government wants to remove fears from the
public. This is because modern democracy depends on a vibrant
news media to keep the public informed. Newspaper has had a
long history of information dissemination, particularly in its
in-depth reporting of events. This task becomes more
demanding in this age of the internet, which has brought with it
so much competition for the printed copy. This is a comparative
study on how Malaysian and Nigerian newspapers reported
some of the crises the two countries experienced between 2007
and 2009. Through content analysis, the study compared the
coverage of crises by newspapers in the two countries. This is
aimed at determining how newspapers in the two countries
differed in their reporting. The research relied on the framing
theory. One of the findings is that Nigerian newspapers have
significantly reported more political, economic and
environmental crises while Malaysian newspapers have
reported more health crisis.
Index Terms—Crisis, newspapers, reporting, coverage.
The authors are with the Department of Media Studies, Faculty of Arts
and Social Science, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur Malaysia
(e-mail: Chibundu@siswa.um.edu.my, ihediwa@utar.edu.my,
Mdsidin.um.edu.my).
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Cite: S. C. Ihediwa and Md. S. A. Ishak, " The Coverage of Crises News in the Malaysian and
Nigerian Newspapers between 2007 and 2009," International Journal of Social Science and Humanity vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 162-170, 2015.