Investigating print media coverage of the ruling party in 2019 presidential elections: A case study of the Namibian and New Era newspapers

Abstract

The context for this study was Namibia's incredible 2019 presidential elections, which investigated patterns of news framing in two leading national newspapers. The Namibian and New Era newspapers were consulted for news articles. A comparative content analysis and discourse were conducted on all SWAPO news articles published in New Era and The Namibian newspapers between January 2019 and December 2019. There were significant differences in the dominant frames used in the two newspapers, implying a link between journalism theories, ethics, and framing. Both quantitative and qualitative analysis was employed to examine findings. The media coverage revealed a high use of horse racing reporting in both newspapers and the SWAPO campaign was more of a game of lose or win to the exclusion of other issues or impacts. These findings imply that media game framing can have negative consequences for constructive citizen engagement in election activities. The study also discussed that election coverage differs significantly between state and private newspapers, and exposed, the masculine nature of election-related media coverage. Government (ruling party) in Namibia has devolved into a daily tragedy for failing to resolve issues such as employment, food security, peace, and infrastructure development, due mainly to Politian’s desire to make promises in order to win rather than to bring about change. The media bears a significant amount of responsibility for projecting and influencing the seriousness of societal issues. The study discovered that the headlines of two national newspapers revealed differences in issue emphasis, SWAPO party portrayal, and party campaign evaluation. This illustrates the significance of changing media coverage of election campaign issues from a dramatized environment to revealing statistics in societal issues for the benefit of society.