Date of Award

2-2023

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Master of Arts in Digital Journalism (MADJ)

First Supervisor/Advisor

Rosalind Raddatz

Department

Graduate School of Media and Communications

Abstract

When Kenya’s second and longest-serving President died on February 4, 2020, four local dailies Daily Nation, The Standard, People Daily and The Star were dominated by stories around his legacy. This was because Moi was the longest-serving President in Kenya, having been in power for 24 years, unprecedented. His tenure in power was marred with various controversial events, including an attempted coup, a single-party state, amongst many other events that have had a significant impact in Kenya’s history, making his death an event of interest to reevaluate his legacy. This study aimed to analyze the dominant thematic narratives in the coverage of President Moi by the four print dailies and establish if there was a change in dominant narratives after his burial on February 12, 2020. The study adopted two theoretical frameworks, Agenda-setting theory and Framing theory. The study employed a mixed method approach. The population for the study was newspapers in Kenya, and the target population was four print publications Daily Nation, The Standard, People Daily and The Star. The study employed purposive sampling, with the total population selected due to their dominant market share, coverage of current affairs, national wide distribution and their existence during the study period. The duration for analysis was 11 days from February 4, 2020 to February 15, 2020 because it was during this period that Moi made headlines across the publications. The period covered events before and after his burial and was a period during which the papers, besides sharing updates of the events and condolences leading to his burial, analysed his legacy. The primary research method was content analysis, and the secondary method was in-depth interviews with senior editors from print publications. The study found that the four publications' dominant thematic narrative in the coverage of the late President Moi was the Glorification narrative. Qualitative interviews revealed that culture was the most considerable influence, more significant than shareholding in having Glorification as the dominant narrative. It was concluded that there was a miss-remembrance of Moi’s legacy by the print publications due to overwhelmingly carrying Glorification as the major narrative in the coverage of President Moi. The study recommends policy implementation to regularize and review future media coverage.

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