Communicating for or about development? How leading newspapers responded to HPV vaccination campaign in Nigeria

This study examined how four leading newspapers in Nigeria - Daily Trust, Punch, Leadership and Vanguard responded to the seven-month Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination campaign in October 2023 – April 2024. The aim was to determine the agenda setting dispositions of the newspapers to the campaign in the context of the question on whether mainstream media communicates for development or about development. The study applied systematic quantification of related articles and analyses of the tones to determine how significant the campaign policy was in the newspapers coverage. Also, the study determined the most supported campaign response behavior (vaccine uptake or rejection) in the newspapers’ coverage and how such may be fitted into the existing cultural biases on the HPV vaccination. Considering the varied public opinions on the purpose of the vaccination, the study interrogated the predominant campaign key messaging theme in the newspapers’ coverage to establish if the newspapers focused mostly on vaccine availability and safety or nonvaccine infection prevention strategies, and how the newspapers vary on this. Overall, the results show a low amount of coverage and progressively low attention to the campaign by the newspapers as only 94 articles were published by all the newspapers throughout the seven-months campaign. This number reduced progressively in the individual newspapers and aggregately from the beginning of the campaign in October 2023 to the end in April 2024. The study also revealed straight news, vertical communication, and weak persuasion in the newspaper’s coverage of the campaign, thus indicating that the newspapers were event-driven in their coverage and that they lacked deliberate involvement to communicate the significance of the vaccination campaign. Being event-driven, the newspapers unavoidably echoed the government statements in supporting the vaccine uptake with predominant key messaging on the vaccine availability and safety. This event-driven informative approach in the coverage of the HPV vaccination campaign by Nigerian newspapers leaves the public with limited basis for the vaccine uptake decisions, thus raising a question for further investigation as to how the influential position of newspapers in Nigeria can be leveraged from communicating about development to communicating for development. Key Words: Communication, Development, Nigerian Newspapers, HPV Vaccination. About the Authors * Sharon Idowu Aserogun is a postgraduate student in the Department of Mass Communication, Nile University of Nigeria, Abuja, Nigeria. ** Yakubu Ozohu-Suleiman, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor and a consulting development communication specialist, currently with the Department of Mass Communication, Nile University of Nigeria, Abuja, Nigeria. *** Abdullateef Muhammed, Ph.D., is a Lecturer in the Department of Mass Communication, Nile University of Nigeria, Abuja, Nigeria. JCMR Journal of Communication and Media Research, Vol. 17, No. 2, October 2025, pp. 193-204 © Association of Media and Communication Researchers of Nigeria (AMCRON).