Ideological Polarisation in Online News Headlines on Farmers-Herders Clashes in Nigeria

Abstract

The farmers-herders crisis in Nigeria has become a reoccurring act of man’s inhumanity to man. It is therefore not surprising that it has become a constant news piece for the media in Nigeria because a week will hardly go by without a report on farmer-herders crisis in Nigeria. Many research efforts have been carried out on this subject matter, especially on the enormity of losses resulting from the clashes; however, there exist paucity of studies in this area. This study is a critical content analysis of the News Headlines that are related farmers-herders clashes in some selected On-line media. Sixteen texts were purposively selected from online media. The selected data were analysed using Van Dijk’s (2012) Principles of Ideological Stances theoretical framework and his theory of socio cognitive functions cited by Ramanathan and Hoon (2015). The study found out that news headlines on farmers-herders conflict were ideologically polarised using ideological stances such as actor description, authority, disclaimer, hyperbole and number game and implication. These discourse strategies were used to convey ideological polarisations in the way news headlines were reported. The study therefore concludes that the way that the media chooses to report the news on this subject matter is very worrisome because they do more than reporting the incident. Their choice of language shows that they are sometimes biased because of their ideological stances. Therefore, readers should endeavour to read through a news piece carefully before taking an opinion because news headlines are sometimes misleading about what the true situation is.