Newspapers framing and experts' perceptions on issues of corruption in Sudan

• Main Author: Hamid, Yassin Bashir Yassin
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English; English; English
• Published: 2019
• Subjects: HM Sociology.
• Online Access: https://etd.uum.edu.my/8553/1/s95349_01.pdf; https://etd.uum.edu.my/8553/2/s95349_02.pdf; https://etd.uum.edu.my/8553/3/s95349_references.docx; https://etd.uum.edu.my/8553/

In spite of decades of political challenges, there is little data available on the state of corruption and newspapers framing in Sudan. Consequently, its widespread has been seriously undermining the fragile Sudanese peacebuilding process. Therefore, the need for a critical examination of the role newspapers played and the perceptions of journalists have become imperative. Hence, the motivation for this study’s objective on the Sudanese newspapers’ coverage in relation to level of prominence, dominant frames, ownership pattern, challenges facing journalists, extent of the effect and the solutions to problems faced by journalists. The study explored the issue through the propositions of agenda setting and news framing theories within a mixed methods design in order to systematically provide a new approach and provide a deep understanding of how the press in Sudan can address the issues of financial corruption. For collection of data, content analysis of four major newspapers in Sudan were applied, while in-depth interviews with 20 Sudanese journalists selected across both government and private newspapers were descriptively and thematically analyzed with SPSS and NVivo 8 software. The analysis was carried out in stages of coding. The findings discovered that the Sudanese press faced many obstacles that prevent its journalistic performance. Not with standing these, prominence was given high attention while responsibility frame was dominant. The findings showed that there is high level of ownership influence which restricted freedom of the media. Also, there are variations in the four newspapers in terms of the five frames. The major challenges are information concealment, lack of investigative training and imposition of taxes and the weak regulations that govern the ownership of various media. Therefore, the study has significantly contributed to the overall perspectives of how newspapers framing affects public awareness about corruption and possible remedies in Sudan. Also, how the external factor, such as ownership, access to the government’s information, censorship and restrictive laws, influence the content of the newspaper. Consequently, this study is suggesting that Sudanese newspapers be reinforced, while the Law of proprietorship need to improve on the protection of journalists who investigate corruption in Sudan.