Nigerian Press Coverage of Hate Speeches in the Daily Trust, The Nation and The Guardian Newspapers

Abstract

In Nigeria, as well as in modern democratic nations, the press has always functioned as a tool for disseminating information on public affairs, interpreting government policies and programs, and providing a good platform to engage the citizens for discussion on issues affecting society. The media play a powerful role as intermediaries between political leaders and the public. The variables of frequency, location, direction, and journalistic genre were used in the study. Within this context, the study adopts content analysis. The study employs Lazarsfeld and Katz’s Two-Step Flow and Castells’ Theory of Network Society as theoretical framework. The study uses stratified sampling by days of the week and coding sheet as a method of data collection. The study found that the manifestation of hate speech was frequent in the 2015 general election. The study also found that the manifestation of hate speech had an overbearing on political news by the selected newspapers in the 2015 general election in Nigeria. The study concludes that such publications (hate speech) tend to make electorates have a different connotation to a candidate.

1. Introduction

Universally, the press and politics are generally believed to enjoy a symbiotic relationship. In Nigeria, as well as in modern democratic nations, the press has always functioned as a tool for disseminating information on public affairs, interpreting government policies and programs, and providing a good platform to engage the citizens for discussion on issues affecting society. The media play a powerful role as intermediaries between political leaders and the public [1]. Xinkum in Suleiman and Owolabi [1] note that the role of the press becomes important, especially in influencing voters’ judgments about the candidates and taking an informed decision about them. This perhaps explains why media scholars have accepted the economic and political changes in society [2].

Up till 1922, the election of public office holders was solely determined by the British colonialists. However, the Clifford Constitution altered the democratic process in the Nigerian political space as Nigerians were given the opportunity to vote and be voted for in the House of parliament. Realizing the role of the media in the democratic process is why a good number of the pre-independence political parties had a newspaper as an ally, which was considered imperative to the survival of their organization [2]. Retrospectively, since 1960, when Nigeria gained its independence from the British colonial ruler, to date, various parliamentary, military, and presidential systems of government have existed. In a democratic society, elections are mostly the conventional means of electing people into all political offices in the country. Against this background, Oso [2] observed that the importance attached to the party’s newspaper was so enormous that people believed that party organizations were built around the press, rather than around organized members.

In line with Oso’s view, the newspaper with its close link to political parties was used to set the political agenda. Newspaper like Lagos Daily News (1925) was established by Herbert Macaulay, who formed the Nigeria National Democratic Party (NNDP). Nnamdi Azikwe also used the West African Pilot (1937) to propagate the evangelism of NCNC in which he was a key stakeholder. Obafemi Awolowo also floated the Nigeria Tribune, which had a close link with the Action Group (AG). In the North, the Northern People’s Congress, in 1949, took over Hausa language newspaper, Gaskiya Ta fi Kwabo, and its English language counterpart, Nigerian Citizen (later as New Nigerian), to advocate, defend, and advance its interest. The Federal government, under the Northern Peoples’ Congress (NPC), established the Morning and Sunday Post; the Eastern Region (under NCNC) had the Eastern Outlook, while the North controlled Gaskiya and the Nigerian Citizen. Furthermore, Chief Samuel Ladoke Akintola established the Morning Star toward the end of his Premiership in the old Western Region.

With the intervention of the military in Nigerian politics on December 31, 1984, the Nigerian mass media witnessed the establishment of magazines, periodicals, and soft-sell newspapers. These include The Newswatch, The News, The Tempo, and Tell magazines. Others were indigenous language newspapers like Alaroye, Gboungboun, and Irohin Yoruba. The magazines in particular concerned themselves with investigative journalism, and they also contributed immensely toward constructive criticism and the democratization processes of the ruling military establishment under Babangida, Abacha, and Abdulsalam Abubakar, respectively. Ever since, the media have regarded the pursuit of full enthronement and sustenance of democracy and democratic institutions and good governance as its abiding responsibilities.

The Independent National Electoral Commission [3] report stated that consequent upon the approval of Saturday, March 28, 2015 as the date for the 2015 presidential and national assembly elections, the campaign exercise began full-blown. In that regard, 14 political parties and presidential candidates were approved by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in their news release. The parties included Action Alliance (AA), Allied Congress Party of Nigeria (ACPN), African Democratic Congress (ADC), All Progressive Congress (APC), Kowa Party (KP), The National Conscience Party (NCP), Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP), and Progressive People’s Alliance (PPA), among others.

At the peak of the electioneering campaign, the two foremost parties (PDP) and (APC) went berserk by taking enmity to the extreme while maligning and attacking the personalities of each other’s presidential aspirants through unbridled use of hate speeches. It became so bad that the entire campaign process was almost turned into a harvest of hatred and incitement of one party against the other instead of selling the individual party manifesto [4]. Within this context, this study examined the manifestation of hate speech in Nigeria.

2. Motivation of the study

Hate speech is a globally endorsed paradigm, and the press, as an important institution in the democratic process, plays a key role during elections. As the Fourth Estate of the Realm, the press provides the platform for narratives and discourses in the service of elections, political negotiations, and other features of the contestations among politicians and other civil organizations involved in election administration. However, problems associated with election reporting and media role in political contestations and machinations, particularly on the African continent, have been a recurrent clog in the wheel of politics in Africa. For instance, in Nigeria, since the 1950s up to the early 1980s, spiraling into the Fourth Republic that started in 1999 and beyond, several election problems that were rooted in perceived mishandling of the electoral process by the media had occurred in the country. The 1965 parliamentary and 1983 general elections were faced by conflicts with accompanying widespread violence, which resulted in military interventions [5].

Apparently, the 2015 election was very keen to the extent that an alliance of opposition parties was formed to produce All Progressives Congress (APC) in a strong bid to dislodge the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) that had been in power since 1999. Findings from the monitoring of the media coverage of these elections showed that there were cases of sponsorship of hate advertorials by the then Ekiti State governor, Ayodele Fayose, who, on January 19, 2015, ran adverts on the front pages of national dailies such as The Daily Sun, The Guardian, and The Punch titled “Nigeria Be Warned”. In the advert, satirical reference was made to Buhari, the presidential candidate of the APC, that given his age and speculated illness and frail nature, he might die in office should he win, according to Sahara Reporters of January 19, 2015.

Incidentally, Section 95 of the Electoral Act 2010 disapproves of hate campaigns by stipulating that: (1) A political campaign or slogan shall not be tainted with abusive language directly or indirectly likely to injure religious, ethnic, tribal, or sectional feelings. (2) Abusive, intemperate, slanderous, or base language or insinuations or innuendoes designed or likely to provoke violent reactions or emotions shall not be employed or used in political campaigns. Yet, there were other instances of lack of discretion on the part of the media in the countdown to the 2015 and 2019 elections, in terms of inappropriate language use and inciting headlines. This was evident in the outcome of the monitoring of 12 national newspapers like Daily Trust, The Nation, The Sun, The Punch, The Guardian, Vanguard, Daily Independent, National Mirror, Leadership, Nigerian Tribune, ThisDay, and Daily Champion [6].

Findings by IPC [7] revealed that stories capable of inciting one section against the other were recorded 45 times during this monitoring period, while hate speech featured 8 times despite these provisions. A total of 117 reports were recorded in these categories in the six-month period at an average of about 20 per month across the 12 selected national print media. The documented inciting headlines also include the following: APC presidential candidate is a fundamentalist—Clarke (ThisDay, Jan. 17, 2015, page 15); will you allow history to repeat history itself? Enough of state burials (Daily Sun, Jan. 19, 2015, page 1); we are set for war—PAC (Nigerian Tribune, November 22, 2019), among others. Given this scenario, it is important to undertake a study on Nigerian press coverage of hate speeches in the Daily Trust, The Nation, and The Guardian newspapers.

3. The basic tool of scientific inquiry

The problem statement informed the basic tool of scientific inquiry in this study as follows:

1. What is the frequency of hate speech in the 2015 general election by the selected newspapers?

2. What is the dominant location for the placement of stories with hate speech in the 2015 general election by the selected newspapers?

3. What is the direction of stories on hate speech in the 2015 general election by the selected newspapers?

4. What journalistic genre was used for hate speech in the 2015 general election by the selected newspapers?

4. Literature review

In relation to the literature, the study observed that the media did not comply with the code of ethics in publishing and broadcasting advertorials, while hate speech and inciting statements especially by the two major political parties (PDP) and (APC) were used in the media. As a result of the influence of advertising as a source of revenue, owners of newspaper businesses did not subject adverts to necessary checks. The existing literature presupposes that newspapers’ coverage of national elections in Nigeria often promotes ethnic, regional, and religious interests. Theoretically, exponents of The Functional Theory of Campaign Discourse argue that the functional theory of campaign discourse renders a helpful scheme to classify and synthesize political advertising. They add that elections are intrinsically competitive; political actors deploy campaign messages that include advertising to present a more preferable image of them. They use political ads to acclaim themselves, positive statements about their credentials as the better candidate; attack an opponent’s credentials; or defend with reputations against an opponents’ attack through media platforms.

This supports the literature argument [1] that newspaper coverage of general elections and newspapers owned by the leaders of different political parties published negative reports on the opponents and their ethnic groups. In addition, comments deemed as offensive and employing hate speech, threats, abusive language, and assassination of character are published by the media. Corroborating, Ogbuoshi et al. [8] observed that hate speech is now a common phenomenon in present day society, and it is mostly made to achieve some sinister goals.

In this repeatedly corroborated incident of hate speech, Critical Race Theory explains the contexts of media use of phrases sponsored by politicians that refer to other opposition groups from descriptions that are not merely rhetorical but also pedestals on which hate speech flourishes. Durkheim’s Social Fact and Weber’s Social Action or Relations Theory depict that social reality focused attention on individualistic autonomy in terms of ideas and desires vis-à-vis social regularity to achieve sinister goals of hate speech in society.

Similarly, the existing literature attests that hate speech has become more vivid in the successive democratic dispensation than the previous ones, thereby keeping the citizens more divided, as hate speech is now the focal point and the instrument of campaigns. Thus, the parade of hate speeches in several newspapers analyzed showed that the media was used by politicians to stoke up hatred and stimulate violence among ethnic and political groups during the electioneering periods. Critics of Critical Discourse Analysis Theory argue that neutral representations are opposed to ideological representations, which are deemed to ‘distort reality. Ideology is, accordingly, conceptualized in negative terms, as the opposite of ‘truth’, which systematically connotes how hate speech and language, dialects, and acceptable statements are used in a particular medium across different audiences.

The trend of discussion in the literature is disturbing, as scholars corroborated that commentators employ the use of hate language, verbal assault, name-calling, insults, and derogatory words to describe subjects. In relation to the above, this study armed with Katz and Lazarsfeld’s Two-Step Flow theory, which asserts that information from the media moves in two distinct stages. First, individuals (opinion leaders) who pay close attention to the mass media and its messages receive the information. Opinion leaders pass on their own interpretations in addition to the actual media content. The reviewed literature also underscores the findings by the Centre for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) [9] that in the last election in Nigeria, instances of hate speeches were seen on conventional and social media. Largely on conventional media, the speeches were broadcast on certain television stations and published in some newspapers as well.

This coalesces with Castells’ Theory of Network Society, which examines the concept of the network to a high level of abstraction, utilizing it as a concept that depicts macro-level tendencies associated with the social organization in informational capitalism. The role of networks in social theory is apt as follows: dominant functions and processes in the information age that are increasingly organized around networks. Within this context, this study examines Nigerian press coverage of hate speeches in the Daily Trust, The Nation, and The Guardian newspapers.

5. Theoretical framework

The study adopted Lazarsfeld and Katz’s Two-Step Flow and Castells’ Theory of Network Society Theories. Lazarsfeld and Katz’s Two-Step Flow was first introduced by Lazarsfeld et al. in 1944 to study the process of decision-making during a presidential election campaign. The study found empirical support for the direct influence of media messages on voting intentions. Armed with this data, Katz and Lazarsfeld developed the Two-Step Flow theory of mass communication. This theory asserts that information from the media moves in two distinct stages. First, individuals (opinion leaders) who pay close attention to the mass media and its messages receive the information. Opinion leaders pass on their interpretations in addition to the actual media content. The term ‘personal influence’ was coined to refer to the process of intervening between the media’s direct message and the audience’s ultimate reaction to that message. Opinion leaders are quite influential in getting people to change their attitudes and behaviors and are quite similar to those they influence. The Two-Step Flow theory has improved the understanding of how the mass media influence decision-making.

The theory refined the ability to predict the influence of media messages on audience behavior, and it helped explain why certain media campaigns may have failed to alter audience attitudes or behavior. The Two-Step Flow theory gave way to the multi-step flow theory of mass communication. Although the empirical methods behind the two-step flow of communication were not perfect, the theory did provide a very believable explanation for information flow. The opinion leaders do not replace media but rather guide discussions of media, which at times lead to issues of hate speeches. Lazarsfeld et al., in Hassan [10], discovered that most voters got their information about the candidates from other people who read about the campaign in the newspapers, not directly from the media. They concluded that word-of-mouth transmission of information plays an important role in the communication process and that mass media have only a limited influence on most individuals. Since opinion leaders pass on their interpretations in addition to the actual media content, the manifestation of hate speeches on the pages of newspapers and how the opinion leaders tag meaning to words in Nigeria, like Gandollar instead of Ganduje, would affect the electoral victory when such interpretations are in a negative direction.

Castells’ Theory of Network Society examines the concept of the network to a high level of abstraction, utilizing it as a concept that depicts macro-level tendencies associated with the social organization in informational capitalism. He expressed the role of networks in social theory as follows: dominant functions and processes in the information age are increasingly organized around networks. Networks constitute the hate speech morphology in societies, and the diffusion of networking logic substantially modifies the operation and outcomes in processes of production, experience, power, and culture. Understanding the societal context of such networks entails returning to the political economy of the social transformation of capitalist society. An analytical concept network is abstract and thus unable to frame the interpretation of real-life networks, whereas theoretical concept network is an excellent crystallization of the social morphology of informational capitalism [11].

As an upshot of the latter, the concept of network society has a certain intellectual appeal, even if it looks almost as if the formal description of the concept of the network was needed only to legitimate its use as a metaphor. Concerning the hardcore of the metaphor, the study comes to the true message of Castellsian political economy (where politicians metaphorically used negative words to refer to other opposition), and the network in its paradigmatic form is about the nodes and connections of powerful financial and economic institutions, which allow the flows of values in pursuit of the newspapers’ accumulation of capital. This implies that ‘network’ in Castells’ social theory is not an analytical concept but rather a powerful metaphor that served to capture the new social morphology of the capitalist system. In this context, the morphological manifestation of hate speech in the discourse of information society gains its momentum; it went out of intellectual fashion as well as political agenda and gave its place to the visions of the creative and or smart society. For instance, in Nigeria, the phrase ‘change begins with me’ is often used metaphorically and polemical.

Although the critics, who looked at the theories of the information society suspiciously as ideological constructs, created for political decisions, rather than instruments for understanding the social reality. Therefore, Castells believes that McLuhan’s dictum, “the medium is the message,” could be adequately applied in the way hate speeches flourish in newspapers’ content. In this perspective, there is a network (politicians and newspaper organizations) that often creates a powerful metaphor that aptly portrays hate speech as a social morphology of information capitalism [12].

6. Research methodology

The study employed content analysis as a method of data generation. Content analysis is an approach used in social science to examine the manifest content of media messages. According to NPC [13], three hundred and ten Nigerian newspapers exist in the country. Therefore, the population of the study constitutes the 310 newspapers in Nigeria. The sampling technique is stratified sampling. Since the sampling technique is stratified sampling by days of the week, it means that the three newspapers under investigation formed the sample size of the study. Below are the sample editions that were studied from the three newspapers:

1. January Editions: (2, 5, 8, 11, 14, 17, 20, 23, 26,) = 9 days.

2. February Editions: (2, 5, 8, 11, 14, 17, 20, 23, 26,) = 9 days.

3. March Editions: (2, 5, 8, 11, 14, 17, 20, 23, 26,) = 9 days.

4. April Editions: (2, 5, 8, 11, 14, 17, 20, 23, 26,) = 9 days.

5. May Editions: (2, 5, 8, 11, 14, 17, 20, 23, 26,) = 9 days.

6. June Editions: (2, 5, 8, 11, 14, 17, 20, 23, 26,) = 9 days.

The sampling interval starts from the second edition of each month, as January has 31 days, February 28, March 31, April 29, May 31, and June 30. Therefore, the scale for rating the sampling is as follows: (2) + 3 = (5) + 3 = (8) + 3 = (11) + 3 = (14) + 3 = (17) + 3 = (20) + 3 = (23) + 3 = (26) in all the months. This means two months were selected before the 2015 general election, two months during the 2015 general election, and two months after the 2015 general election to determine the manifestation of hate speech by the three newspapers.

The papers are selected because they are among the 12 national papers, which means they share certain characteristics. The study considered the following units of analysis: political news, editorial, cartoons, and advertorial.

1. Political news: These are stories on politics that contained hate speech in the 2015 general election by the selected newspapers.

2. Editorial: This is a newspaper’s column that had some elements of hate speech in the 2015 general election by the three newspapers.

3. Cartoons: These are illustrations, which consist of images or photographs that portrayed hate speech in the 2015 general election by the selected newspapers.

4. Advertorial: These are paid contents that had elements of hate speech in the 2015 general election by the selected newspapers.

The content categorization is based on the indicators that are used to identify what constitutes hate speech like offensive, hateful, incisive, pungent, and sarcasm as developed by [11, 14] and moderated by the current study. These forms of hate speech were read and carefully placed into the following categories:

1. Offensive: Comments that attack personalities in the 2015 general election as published by the selected newspapers.

2. Hateful: Comments that are insultive of ethnic, religious, or regional groups in the 2015 general election by the sampled newspapers.

3. Incisive statement: Comments that call for violent attacks against individuals, members of a particular ethnic group, or region in the 2015 general election by the three papers.

4. Pungent: Comments that are targeted at a person, which are in the form of criticism or humor, in the 2015 general election by the selected newspapers.

5. Sarcasm: These are utterances that are calculated to mock a person or group in the 2015 general election as published by the three papers.

The data gathering instrument in this study is a coding sheet. Coding is a visible surface in a text; for example, the researcher counts the number of times or phrases that appear in a written text. The study adopted content validity whereby experts in the field of communication ascertained the comprehensiveness and adequacy of the coding sheet [11]. Two coders were trained and trusted to code the selected editions. Data generated were presented using cross-tabulation, frequency, and percentages.

7. Findings and discussion

Table 1 examines the frequency of hate speech in the 2015 general election by the selected newspapers. Based on the data, the manifestation of hate speech in the 2015 by Daily Trust accounts for 20% (n = 67) offensive, 24.2% (n = 81) hateful, 17.3% (n = 58) incentive, 15.5% (n = 52) pungent, and 22.10% (n = 77) sarcasm. The Nation has 20.9% (n = 57) offensive, 24.3% (n = 66) hateful, 14.3% (n = 39) incentive, 21.3% (n = 58) pungent, and 19.1% (n = 52) sarcasm. The Guardian records 18.2% (n = 65) offensive, 27.5% (n = 98) hateful, 15.2% (n = 54) incentive, 17.7% (n = 63) pungent, and 21.3% (n = 76) sarcasm. Cumulatively, the manifestation of hate speech in the Daily Trust, The Nation, and The Guardian newspapers are as follows: 19.6% (n = 189) offensive, 25.4% (n = 245) hateful, 15.7% (n = 151) incentive, 17.10% (n = 173) pungent, and 21.3% (n = 205) sarcasm. The data indicate that the manifestation of hate speech was more frequent in The Guardian in the 2015 general election, followed by the Daily Trust newspaper. Based on the content categorization, hateful speeches were dominant compared to other categories like offensive, incentive, pungent, and sarcasm in the 2015 general election.

Newspapers (2015)	Daily Trust		The Nation		The Guardian		Total
Categories	No.	%	No.	%	No.	%	No.	%
Offensive	67	20	57	20.9	65	18.2	189	19.6
Hateful	81	24.2	66	24.3	98	27.5	245	25.4
Incentive	58	17.3	39	14.3	54	15.2	151	15.7
Pungent	52	15.5	58	21.3	63	17.7	173	17.10
Sarcasm	77	22.10	52	19.1	76	21.3	205	21.3
Total	335	100	272	100	356	100	963	100

Table 1.

Frequency of hate speech in the 2015 general election.

(Source: author’s computation, 2022).

Table 2 shows the independent sample statistics of 2015 frequency of hate speech (FQHS). The FQHS mean of 2015 (64.20) is significantly high. This indicates that in the selected newspapers, hate speech in the 2015 general election was very high, which validates the findings in Table 1 above. The IPC report [7] also supported the findings that many of the news reports at the 2015 presidential campaign had dangerous and outrageous headlines. Some of the statements were largely disparaging, while a great number turned out to be a figment of the imagination of politicians. Stories capable of inciting one section of the nation against the other were recorded forty-five (45) times during the 2015 presidential campaign.

	Year	N	Mean	Std. deviation	Std. error mean
FQHS	2015	15	64.20	14.408	3.720

Table 2.

Independent samples statistics of 2015 frequency of hate speech.

Source: SPSS version 25.

Table 3 ascertains the dominant location for the placement of stories with hate speech in the 2015 general election by the selected newspapers. The rating scale of the front page, inside page, and back pages was used to determine the manifestation of hate speech in the 2015 general election. The data show that in the 2015 general elections, Daily Trust has 17.6% (n = 59) stories that contained hate speech on the front page, 79.1% (n = 265) on the inside page, and 3.3% (n = 11) on the back page. The Nation accounts for 17.6% (n = 48) stories with hate speech on the front page, 79.8% (n = 217) on the inside page, and 2.6% (n = 7) on the back page.

Newspapers (2015)	Daily Trust		The Nation		The Guardian		Total
Location/Placement	No.	%	No.	%	No.	%	No.	%
Front Page	59	17.6	48	17.6	42	11.8	149	15.5
Inside Page	265	79.1	217	79.8	297	83.4	779	80.9
Back Page	11	3.3	7	2.6	17	4.8	35	3.6
Total	335	100	272	100	356	100	963	100

Table 3.

Dominant location for the placement of stories with hate speech in the 2015 general election.

(Source: author’s computation, 2022).

Similarly, The Guardian records 11.8% (n = 42) stories that contained hate speech on the front page, 83.4% (n = 297) on the inside page, and 4.8% (n = 17) on the back page. Cumulatively, in 2015, 15.5% (n = 149) are on the front page, 80.9% (n = 779) on the inside page, and 3.6% (n = 35) on the back page. Based on the result, the manifestation of hate speech by the selected newspapers in 2015 appears more on the inside pages than on front and back pages.

Table 4 shows the independent sample statistics of 2015 dominant locations for the placement of stories with hate speech (DOML). The DOML mean of 2015 (107.00) is very high. The result is concomitant with the findings in Table 3. In another corroborated literature, (CITAD) [9] found that in the last election in Nigeria, instances of hate speeches were seen on conventional and social media. Largely on conventional media, the speeches were broadcast on certain television stations and published in some newspapers as well. In this repeatedly corroborated incident of hate speech in the selected newspapers, Castells’ Theory of Network Society examines the concept of the network to a high level of abstraction, utilizing it as a concept that depicts macro-level tendencies associated with the social organization in informational capitalism. He expressed the role of networks in social theory as follows: dominant functions and processes in the information age are increasingly organized around networks where issues of hate speech are dominant.

	Year	N	Mean	Std. deviation	Std. error mean
DOML	2015	9	107.00	117.521	39.174

Table 4.

Independent samples statistics of 2015 dominant location for the placement of stories with hate speech.

Source: SPSS version 25.

Table 5 identified the direction of stories on hate speech in the 2015 general election by the selected newspapers. The data point that Daily Trust has 30.7% (n = 103) in the positive direction, 34.3% (n = 115) in the negative direction, while 34.9% (n = 117) were in the neutral direction. The Nation has 27.2% (n = 74) in the positive direction, 35.7% (n = 97) in the negative direction, and 37.1% (n = 101) in the neutral direction. Furthermore, The Guardian has 31.5% (n = 112) in the positive direction, 35.4% (n = 126) in the negative direction, and 33.1% (n = 118) in the neutral direction. Cumulatively, 30.0% (n = 289) was in the positive direction, 35.1% (n = 338) in the negative direction, and 34.9% (n = 336) in the neutral direction. The data show that the manifestation of hate speech by the selected newspapers was in the negative direction with 35.1% in the 2015 general election.

Newspapers (2015)	Daily Trust		The Nation		The Guardian		Total
Direction	No.	%	No.	%	No.	%	No.	%
Positive	103	30.7	74	27.2	112	31.5	289	30.0
Negative	115	34.3	97	35.7	126	35.4	338	35.1
Neutral	117	34.9	101	37.1	118	33.1	336	34.9
Total	335	100	272	100	356	100	963	100

Table 5.

Direction of stories on hate speech in the 2015 general election.

(Source: author’s computation, 2022).

Table 6 shows the independent sample statistics of 2015 direction of stories on hate speech (DIRS). The DIRS mean of 2015 (107.00) is significantly high. This validates the findings in Table 5 that hate speech was in a negative direction in 2015. This supports the literature argument [15] that although quantitatively, positive comments dominate the study population, qualitatively, the trend of discussion is disturbing, as commentators employ the use of hate language, verbal assault, name-calling, insults, and derogatory words to describe subjects. For example, on the inside page of The Nation newspaper of Sunday, March 15, 2015, Patience Jonathan, former First Lady, said “Anybody that come and tell you change (that is, the APC slogan), stone that person … What you did not do in 1985, is it now that old age has caught up with you that you want to come and change … You cannot change rather you will turn back to a baby.” Armed with the theoretical postulations of Katz and Lazarsfeld’s Two-Step Flow theory, which asserts that information from the media moves in two distinct stages. First, individuals (opinion leaders) who pay close attention to the mass media and its messages receive the information. Opinion leaders pass on their interpretations in addition to the actual media content.

	Year	N	Mean	Std. deviation	Std. error mean
DIRS	2015	9	107.00	15.460	5.153

Table 6.

Independent samples statistics of 2015 direction of stories on hate speech.

Source: SPSS version 25.

Newspapers (2015)	Daily Trust		The Nation		The Guardian		Total
Journalistic Genres	No.	%	No.	%	No.	%	No.	%
Political News	285	85.1	231	84.9	309	86.8	825	85.7
Editorial	12	3.6	8	2.9	9	2.5	29	3.0
Cartoons	21	6.3	24	8.8	21	5.9	66	6.8
Advertorial	17	5.1	9	3.3	17	4.8	43	4.5
Total	335	100	272	100	356	100	963	100

Table 7.

Journalistic genre for hate speech in the 2015 general election.

(Source: author’s computation, 2022).

Table 7 examines the journalistic genre in which hate speech in the 2015 general election appeared in the selected newspapers. Thus, in the 2015 general elections, Daily Trust has 85.1% (n = 285) on political news, 3.6% (n = 12) on editorial, 6.3% (n = 21) on cartoons, while 5.1% (n = 17) on advertorial. Similarly, The Nation has 84.9% (n = 231) on political news, 2.9% (n = 8) on editorial, 8.8% (n = 24) on cartoons, while 3.3% (n = 9) on advertorial. Also, The Guardian has 86.8% (n = 309) on political news, 2.5% (n = 9) on editorial, 5.9% (n = 21) on cartoons, and 4.8% (n = 17) on advertorial. In the overall journalistic genre, 85.7% (n = 825) was on political news, 3.0% (n = 29) was on editorial, 6.8% (n = 66) was on cartoons, and 4.5% (n = 43) was on advertorial. The data show that The Guardian accounts the highest in terms of political news with 86.8%, followed by Daily Trust with 85.1% and The Nation with 84.9%. This implies that in the 2015 general election, the manifestation of hate speech was on political news by the selected newspapers.

Table 8 shows the independent sample statistics of the 2015 journalistic genres used for hate speech (JOUG). The JOUG mean of 2015 (80.25) is adequate. This corroborated the findings in Table 7 that the manifestation of hate speech in the 2015 general election appear more on political news. Rasaq et al. [16] observed that hate speech was the focal point and the instrument of the campaign. Therefore, the parade of hate speeches in several newspapers analyzed showed that media was used by politicians to stoke up hatred and stimulate violence among ethnic and political groups during the electioneering periods as well as in daily life.

	Year	N	Mean	Std. deviation	Std. error mean
JOUG	2015	12	80.25	118.779	34.288

Table 8.

Independent samples statistics of 2015 journalistic genre used for hate speech.

Source: SPSS version 25.

8. Conclusion

The study examines Nigerian press coverage of hate speeches in the Daily Trust, The Nation, and The Guardian newspapers. The study found that the manifestation of hate speech is frequent in 2015 general election. Such speeches appear more in The Guardian in the 2015 general election, followed by Daily Trust, and The Nation newspaper has fewer stories that contain hate speeches within the period of the study. The study discovered that the manifestation of hate speech by the selected newspapers in the 2015 general election was significantly high on the inside pages than front and back pages. The findings of the study revealed that the manifestation of hate speech by the selected newspapers was in a negative direction in 2015. The study also found that the manifestation of hate speech had an overbearing on political news by the selected newspapers in the 2015 general election in Nigeria. The study concludes that such publications (hate speech) tend to make electorates have a different connotation to a candidate.