Gendering the Agenda: A Look at Front Page Photographs of a National Newspaper

Abstract

The study investigates the current trend of photojournalism and provides a content analysis of front page photographs in the Daily Graphic, the Ghanaian state owned national newspaper. The study used a six months review of the paper in a non election year and the variables used for assessment were type, focus, subject and newsworthiness of news pictures. Under type, 80 percent were general news pictures on politics, politicians and current affairs in a non election year. Under subject, 50 percent of the issues were socio-political while under prominence, 83 percent were newsworthy. There were no feature news pictures as well as news pictures on women. The newspaper adopts a pattern of depicting substantive issues as socio-political and their recurrent coverage as the means of setting agenda through which worthiness and prominence are portrayed to the public. This has implications for the politics of gender and engendering the newspaper’s agenda setting.