Online news coverage of a university in crisis, a case study of university of education, Winneba

Abstract

The study examined the issues discussed by Ghanaian news sites in their coverage of the UEW crisis. The study also investigated the tones used in the coverage of the UEW crisis and the perspectives of both UEW staff and students on the coverage of the crisis by news sites. Using framing theory, the study employed document analysis and interviews to gather data from purposely selected online publications from citifmonline.com and myjoyonline.com and 10 participants respectively. Content analysis of 1,220 paragraphs of revealed that the news sites used Entman’s (1991) five frames to frame issues about the conflict around the following themes: power struggle between parties in the university’s stakeholders; poor administrative procedures and victimisation by university’s management; actions that protracted the crisis; and resolution of the crisis as the responsibility of the university’s stakeholders. Also, the conflict, morality and consequence frames had negative tones while the responsibility frame had a positive tone. The staff and students of the university perceived coverage of issues about the crisis as a power struggle between stakeholders of the university, mismanagement and favouritism by management and created a negative image for the university. The study recommends that the university’s stakeholders should adopt constructive and creative ways of resolving conflicts by extensively engaging all conflicting parties together in communication processes that seek to resolve the crisis.