Labour and agitation discourse: media text analysis of industrial crisis in public universities in Nigeria

Abstract

The recurrence of labour conflicts between public universities and the Nigerian government has been a subject of media coverage and concern for researchers. Previous studies have paid attention to media reportage of industrial crises with little attention paid to framing patterns and discourse strategies employed by newspapers. This study, therefore, investigated media and agitation discourse reportage using ASUU-FGN industrial crises as a case study with a view to underscoring the discourse strategies employed by the media and the underpinning ideologies behind the textual representations.The critical textual analysis was adopted as design for the study. Four newspapers: The Guardian, the Punch, the Daily Sun and the Daily Trust were purposely selected based on North, West, East and South distribution of the country.Twenty-eight news articles were selected through critical case sampling.The data were subjected to theme mapping and critical textual analysis. Mediation of different agitation discourses were examined with the following discourse strategies: stereotyping, topicalisation, dominance, resistance, persuasive propaganda and legitimation to support socio power and impose media hegemonic views on readership. Media partisanship, journalistic values and ideological orientations of the media affected the credibility and effective mediation, thereby subjecting the labour agitation to rationalisation. The press should shun  bias reportage in agitation discourses to labour disputes.