Abstract:
The study examined the issues discussed by Ghanaian news sites in their coverage of
the UEW crisis. The study also investigated the tones used in the coverage of the UEW
crisis and the perspectives of both UEW staff and students on the coverage of the crisis
by news sites. Using framing theory, the study employed document analysis and
interviews to gather data from purposely selected online publications from
citifmonline.com and myjoyonline.com and 10 participants respectively. Content
analysis of 1,220 paragraphs of revealed that the news sites used Entman’s (1991) five
frames to frame issues about the conflict around the following themes: power struggle
between parties in the university’s stakeholders; poor administrative procedures and
victimisation by university’s management; actions that protracted the crisis; and
resolution of the crisis as the responsibility of the university’s stakeholders. Also, the
conflict, morality and consequence frames had negative tones while the responsibility
frame had a positive tone. The staff and students of the university perceived coverage
of issues about the crisis as a power struggle between stakeholders of the university,
mismanagement and favouritism by management and created a negative image for the
university. The study recommends that the university’s stakeholders should adopt
constructive and creative ways of resolving conflicts by extensively engaging all
conflicting parties together in communication processes that seek to resolve the crisis.
Description:
A thesis in the Department of Communication and Media Studies,
Faculty of Foreign Languages Education and Communication,
submitted to the School of Graduate Studies in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the award of the degree of
Master of Philosophy
(Media Studies)
in the University of Education, Winneba.
JULY, 2020
