Linguistic Framing in the Reportage of Obasanjo’s Letter to President Buhari

Abstract

Reporters use different strategies to present news not only to inform or capture the attention of the readers but also to dictate what to think and debate. They set agenda for discussion and frame part of a news to engender public discussion and opinion. Scholars have worked on framing in the print and electronic media. This work focuses on how the media present the letter by former President Olusegun Obasanjo to the incumbent President, Muhammadu Buhari by investigating the use and implication of framing on social media. Social media has become an important avenue for national discourse because it allows open and wide range readers participation unlike before. Framing theory and textual analysis was adopted as analytical technique. In a bid to examine the framing strategy and choice of words used in reporting the former President’s letter, different news headlines sourced from websites of various newspapers were documented. Ten headlines were discussed. Reporters utilized their adept penmanship to focus various part of the letter to reinforce covet and overt meaning through different framing strategies. Thereby the wheel of public opinion is largely at the media’s disposal and could be wielded at will if unchecked. We realised that the media were able to control the discourse on the letter through different framing technique. Our recommendation therefore includes in-depth knowledge of reporting and objectivity because this type of strategy is capable of causing and aggravating crisis. It is also capable of undermining an important aspect of event as experienced in the case understudy.