Examining Newspaper Coverage of Kidnapping Cases in Nigeria

This study analyzed the coverage of kidnapping cases in the Daily Trust andThe Guardian newspapers with focus on the frequency of coverage, story type, the framings of kidnapping cases and level of prominence given to kidnapping from 2015 to December 2019. The theoretical framework of the study was agenda setting Theory by Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw in 1972 and framing Theory by Gregory Bateson in 1972. The study adopted content analysis with data collected from four hundred and eighty (480) editions of Daily Trust andThe Guardian from 2015 to December 2019. The data were analyzed using simple descriptive statistical tools; tables and percentages. The findings revealed that the coverage of kidnapping cases is very low (at 6.0%).Another finding of the study showed that kidnapping cases were presented by the two newspapers in the straight news format.The third finding of the study revealed that that the most dominant frame used is the political frame (20.1%) which projected kidnapping as related to politicians and political activities.