The media and health education: Did Nigerian media provide sufficient warning messages on coronavirus disease?

Abstract

Previous studies on media coverage of health issues hardly recognize the role of time in moderating media contents. Instead, scholars most often examine how news media report health issues. In this study, we recognized the role of time by taking into account how media report differs based on when a global outbreak is confirmed in a country and when it is not. We focused on coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and examined six media—two TV stations, two newspapers and two radio stations. We content-analysed 537 stories and found that there were few stories about the virus before it was confirmed in Nigeria. But as soon as Nigeria recorded a confirmed case, the number of stories tripled. We also noticed that story format and recommendation on health behaviour were also closely linked to the COVID-19 status of Nigeria. However, we did not find an association between Nigeria’s COVID-19 status and policy recommendation among the media studied. Therefore, this study concludes that Nigerian media did not provide sufficient health warning messages on COVID-19 before its spread to the country.

Exploring the Relationship Between Exposure to Media Messages on Covid-19 and Compliance with Its Preventive Measures Among Residents of Delta State, Nigeria

“…This finding implies that the people in urban areas of Delta State, Nigeria had adequate exposure to the mass media messages on the Covid-19. This result is in tandem with the findings of Nwakpu et al (2020), Casero-Ripollés (2020), Gever and Ezeah (2020) and Smith et al (2020). They found that the public had adequate and frequent exposure to media messages on the Covid-19 pandemic.…”

“…This result implies that Delta State residents regarded the mass media coverage of the pandemic as high. This finding is in tandem with those Casero-Ripollés (2020), Nwakpu et al (2020) and Gever and Ezeah (2020), which indicated that many people commended the media coverage of the pandemic.…”

“…In respect of the current pandemic, Gever & Ezeah (2020) found that Nigeria's mass media has played enormous roles in managing its Covid-19 crisis. The members of the public frequently accessed information about the pandemic through the media.…”

Health Advertising during the Lockdown: A Comparative Analysis of Commercial TV in Spain

“…Many previous works have used this theory to study the agenda-setting effects of advertising [38,39], although they have focused mostly on political advertising and the second level of the agenda, and few analyses have been undertaken using the first level of agenda-setting to study other types of advertising. Similarly, agenda-setting has been previously used to analyze the coverage of health crises [40], and previous studies have examined the role of the media during the COVID pandemic from the perspective of the agenda-setting theory [41]. However, these approaches have focused mostly on the media coverage or information rather than on the advertising.…”

The moderating role of colour in modelling the effectiveness of COVID-19 YouTube animated cartoons on the health behaviour of social media users in Nigeria

“…At first, it was regarded as a Chinese problem and as such, no one imagined that the virus had the propensity to spread across the world and bring economic and political activities to a standstill. Gever and Ezeah (2020) note that from the small city of Wuhan, the virus spilled over to other areas of the country and started spreading to other countries of the world to a level that borders of countries were shut down. In worst cases, inter-city movements among countries were restricted, schools were shutdown, places of worship were also affected, and public gatherings were discouraged.…”