GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE (GBV) IN THE NEW NORMAL: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF SELECT NIGERIAN NEWSPAPER'S COVERAGE

Gender-based violence has become a social issue that calls for appropriate media coverage to highlight its threat to society. There have been more cases of rape, physical abuse, domestic violence, and sexual assault/exploitation, all of which have received little to no media attention. Hence, this paper examined Gender-based Violence in the New Normal: a Comparative Analysis of Selected Nigerian Newspaper's Coverage. The objective of this study is to ascertain the frequency of gender-based violence and comparatively analyse gender-based violence in the two selected newspapers: The Punch and The Guardian newspapers, which were purposively selected for the study. The Agenda Setting theory was adopted to understand how much importance the media places on issues to shape the public discussion. A quantitative analysis design was adopted for the study, and a coding sheet was used for data collection. To establish a comparative analysis of gender-based violence reports, Saturday newspapers from July to December 2019 (the period just before the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic) and January to June 2022 (the most recent publications) are selected for this study. The coverage of gender-based violence cases in selected Nigerian newspapers varied significantly between 2019 and 2022. As a result, more cases of sexual gender-based violence were reported in the selected newspapers in 2019, while more cases of physical gender-based violence were reported in 2022. Findings also revealed that, in terms of gender-based violence cases, the Punch newspaper outweighed the Guardian newspaper between 2019 and 2022. Findings also revealed that, in terms of gender-based violence cases, the Punch newspaper outweighed the Guardian newspaper between 2019 and 2022. The study concluded that there is insufficient coverage of cases of gender-based violence. It is recommended that the media should educate and sensitise people of all ages and social classes about the underlying cause causes of violence and how to prevent it.