Media representation of children, women, elderly and peoples with Disability of society: the case of radio fana broadcasting Corporate

Abstract

This study attempts to analyze the representation of children, women, elderly and peoples with disability of society in Radio Fana Broadcasting Corporate news stories. In order to attain the major objectives, the study has raised major research questions related to the predominant types of 90-minutesMiiltooWaarii news and issues that are frequently covered by the news stories; how and to what extent the selected news stories have represented the Children, women, elderly and peoples with disability in its news. To undertake the assignment, representation theory is employed. Both quantitative and qualitative approaches were used to analyze the data and cross sectional research designs is used.Both simple random sampling specifically lottery method of sampling and purposive sampling were used. Hence, news content analysis was the main method of analysis. In-depth interviews were also made with six people who were directly related to the news stories, i.e. news stories coordinators of the newsroom, producers, and journalists of the news stories. The result gained from both news content analysis and in-depth interviews confirmed that marginalized group society concerning issues have got a little coverage in 90-minutes miiltoowaarii news stories. Therefore, the extent of coverage and how marginalized group society news represented in Radio fana of the 90 minutes MiiltooWaariiis not at a good level. The data gained from news content analysis reveal that Child issues only contained 88(2%),Women 105(3%), Elderly news 75 (2%) & lastly peoples with disabilities news 56(1%), in 90-minutes miiltoo waarii news stories. Almost all informants of Fana Radio also realized that marginalized groups' society(MGS)news was predominantly underrepresented in their news stories. Additionally, the informant mentioned the three main reasons for not significantly covering this society;Journalists of 90-minutes miiltoo waarii deosn‟t analyzed the running 90-minutes Miiltoo Waarii news contents to identify as professional journalists are represented all news in a balanced way; lack of journalists interest to do news on these people purposefully than keeping news events which may occur related to marginalized group society; lack of focus/attention in reporting news about marginalized group society. Based on the findings, some recommendations for action were forwarded.