Mediatized Conflict: A Case of Nigerian Media Reportage of Farmer-Herder Conflict

One of the security challenges facing Nigeria is the farmer-herder conflict. Ranked second to the Boko Haram insurgency, its pervasive nature has constituted impediments to attaining Goal 16 of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals in Nigeria. This is owing to its adverse impact on peace, livelihoods, and property. The farmer-herder conflict, although it is not new, the intensity of media coverage and priming it receives has given it increased publicity and varying perspectives, which have not received adequate scholarly attention. This chapter, therefore, explores the dimension of this publicity and perspectives vis-à-vis conflict (de)escalatory narratives. Specifically, the study examines how the Nigerian media are implicated in constructing frames (ethnicity and cultural identities/dimensions) for the farmer-herder conflict because of the roles they played in reporting the conflict, and the stakeholders’ perception of the media reportage of this conflict. The chapter interrogates the narratives presented by selected Nigerian national newspapers about war journalism versus peace journalism. Anchored on Erving Goffman’s framing theory, the study was carried out using both quantitative and qualitative content analyses as well as in-depth interviews. The findings revealed that the media undermined the peace approach to the conflict; they are overtly or covertly implicated in the escalation of the farmer-herder conflict by foregrounding the cultural traits of the herders to depict their aggressiveness in achieving a better environment for their animals as well as the sustainability of the herding business. Given the findings, we posit that the peace approach needs to be properly articulated to actualize the attainment of Sustainable Development Goal 16 in Nigeria.