Newspaper Coverage of Tourism: A Content Analysis of the Daily Graphic and the Mirror.

Abstract

The main objective of this study was to investigate how the Daily Graphic, Ghana’s most credible and widely circulated paper and the Mirror, Ghana’s number one weekend paper covered tourism in 2013 and 2014. Framing and agenda-setting theories were used to underpin the study. The composite week method was used to draw a sample of 104 out of a universe of 628 editions of the Daily Graphic for content analysis while all 104 editions of the Mirror were content analysed. Straight news stories, features, editorials and letters to the editor were analysed to determine the extent of coverage and how those covered were represented. The findings revealed that the two newspapers did not give enough coverage to tourism. There were a total of 184 (1.08%) tourism stories covered out of 17020 stories in the editions sampled. The Mirror however covered more tourism issues than the Daily Graphic. The Mirror recorded 131(2.16%) tourism stories while the Daily Graphic recorded 53(0.48%) tourism stories. Also, the Daily Graphic gave more prominence (24.4%) to tourism stories than the Mirror (0.00%). The study revealed that the frequently used frames in the study included; cultural heritage, nature tourism, economic benefits, tourism development environmental management and international tourism. Keywords: Newspapers, Coverage, Tourism