oyetayo bukola’s scientific contributions

Media reports on domestic violence are replete with stories of domestic violence against women. They focus more on how husbands maltreat their wives with little attention paid to how wives maltreat their husbands. Even when the media reports cases of domestic violence against men, the dominant frames employed misrepresent these cases. This study therefore investigates the newspaper framing of domestic violence against men in Nigeria. The objectives were to establish the frames of domestic violence, dominant frames, adopted editorial formats and the valences of the reportage in Nigerian newspapers. The study employed the media framing theory, and mixed methods of research designs. Two Nigerian newspapers – Punch and Vanguard were purposively selected from the inventory of the Nigerian Press Council. The coverage period was between January 2018 and May 2021. The choice of this period was based on the prevalence of domestic violence stories at that period in time. Forty stories of domestic violence against men were purposively selected for content analysis while In-depth interviews were conducted with four (4) newspaper editors. The domestic violence against men was framed around morality (35%), conflict (25%), powerlessness (15%), economics (12.5%), human interest (10%) and attribution of responsibility (2.5%). The dominant frames were morality, conflict, and powerlessness. The selected newspapers employed mainly news stories for their editorial format. More so, eighteen (18) stories (45%) were reported with a positive tone, 6 stories (15%) were reported with a negative tone, and 16 stories (40%) with a balanced tone.