Headlines and misinformation in the Nigerian newspapers: Evidence from herder-farmer crisis and ENDSARS protests

Abstract

The increase in media proliferation as a result of the emergence of social media as alternative sources of news dissemination and consumption has led to many changes in journalism, such as declining gatekeeping and content scrutiny. Thus, headline construction and structuring play a crucial role in this new era of news. Like their counterparts all over the world, Nigeria’s mainstream media are not left out of this raging redefinition of news construction and distribution in a hyperbolic and propagandistic format, despite their significant contributions to democracy since its return in 1999. The rise of insecurity and the attendance of political uproars, buoyed by online misinformation through pluralistic digital media, triggers intentional or inadvertent mistakes among the hitherto respected and credible mainstream media causing the need to respond to the salient issues in the media spaces without being out of the mainstream. Using the content analysis and process tracing methods, this paper explores the influence of the current media agenda on the gatekeeping of news that is increasingly spreading misinformation via clickbait on the headlines of the mainstream media.