Out of frame: invisibilisation of non-human nature in media framing of a land conflict transformation policy in Nigeria

Emmanuel Uchenna Ugwu, Ter Moses Akase

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    Abstract

    Public policy response to land-use conflict often exacerbates contestation rather than fostering consensus, further polarising stakeholders and darkening peacebuilding prospects. The Nigerian government conceived the National Livestock Transformation Plan (NLTP) to tackle the protracted land-use conflict between nomadic pastoralists and sedentary crop farmers. This study examined the framing of the policy in three select Nigerian newspapers, the Daily Sun, the Daily Trust, and Punch, published between January 2018 and June 2021. The findings revealed the preponderance of five anthropocentric frames. The environmental frame was absent from the newspaper framing of NLTP, reflecting a blind spot in the representation of a farmer–herder conflict rooted in the asymmetric visions of human–nature relations of the conflict parties. The voices of environmental actors and the scientific community did not feature in the discourse on the Plan. Their detachment from the framing contest contributed to the information blackout on the policy’s relationship with the natural environment. Nature is a stakeholder in land-use conflict, a reality that may be obscured, misrepresented, or underrepresented by human-centred news framing. Media framing of land-use conflict policy should aim at the nuanced reflection of the conflict universe and the embeddedness of biodiversity–the voiceless, non-aligned, and indispensable actants in ecological conflict.

    Original languageEnglish
    Number of pages22
    JournalAfrican Journalism Studies
    DOIs
    Publication statusE-pub ahead of print (In Press) - 2024

    Bibliographical note

    Publisher Copyright:
    © 2024 The Author(s). Co-published by Unisa Press and Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

    Keywords

    • conflict
    • framing
    • National Livestock Transformation Plan
    • nature
    • newspapers

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