The specific role of mass communication and the mass media in the development dynamics is still quite controvertible. So is the status of development communication as a theoretical construct, as the multiplicity of its definitions suggests. These issues have become more critical in the light of recent world-wide political changes and of the many instances of debilitating ethnic conflicts. It is in this context that this paper investigated the incidence of development-oriented content in two Nigerian dailies, hypothesizing that, despite the claims that Nigerian newspapers have been excessively political, their contents are significantly more development-oriented than not and that this orientation is topically diversified and consistent over time. The results of the content-analysis study showed that the papers were more nondevelopmental in their orientation than developmental. Other aspects of the findings suggest, however, that sustained development requires a communication and governance system that accounts for both human rights and human needs.
Read
