READERS’ PERCEPTION OF PHOTOGRAPHS IN NIGERIAN NEWSPAPER: A STUDY OF BENIN CITY RESIDENTS, EDO STATE

ABSTRACT

This research work is christened “Readers’ Perception of Photographs in Nigerian Newspaper: A Study of Benin City Residents, Edo State”. Photographs in newspapers enhance the credibility of stories as they depict reality and furnish evidence to show the authenticity of a news story or proof of an event that occurred. The study was conducted to find out how readers perceive photographs in Nigerian newspapers. To ascertain readers’ perception, three research questions were drawn in line with the study objectives. The researcher used the uses and gratification theory and the perception theory for this work. The survey research design was adopted for the study; data for the study was sourced from primary sources, where 100 respondents’ were sampled from 10 newspapers stand in Benin metropolis and the data collected from the field survey were analyzed using simple tables, frequency and percentage. Findings show that there is no uniform perception by readers to photographs in Nigerian newspapers. Thus readers have developed different perception towards photographs in Nigerian newspaper as larger portion of the respondents see photographs as more informative than other sources. Also photographs help to attract peoples' attention, reactions, feelings and breaks language and illiteracy barriers. The study also raveled that education is not a prerequisite to understanding the messages photographs convey in newspaper. However larger percentage of readers’ is still uncertain if photographs speak louder than written words and communicates without interpretation. Lastly, the researcher identified from the findings that majority of newspaper reader were male especially on the newspaper stand. The study recommends that Photo editors/ photojournalists should ensure that photographs on newspapers reflect the message they tends to pass to its numerous readers, professionalism should be the watch word and certain prerequisite should be met to be qualified as photojournalist, more photojournalism related courses should be introduced in tertiary institutions to train students. Reading of newspaper should not be considered as male business, women should also be encouraged to read newspapers.