A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE HEADLINES OF THE PUNCH NEWSPAPER AND INSTABLOG IN NIGERIA

Abstract

The mass media in Nigeria and the world are going through a series of changes and developments that accompany the gradual evolution of the internet. The spread of information and news gradually and steadily moves from print and audio broadcasts to digital platforms. With the emergence of smartphones, new forms of news and information from social media, websites and blogs, become the primary means of accessing media broadcasts. Every news report begins with headlines. However, with this new development, news headlines are accompanied by different features that deviate from the common forms found in newspapers. Thus, this study aims to analyse the news headlines in the print media and news blogs on social media. It compares and contrasts both headlines, specifically analysing Nigerian Newspaper headlines and Instablog which is one of the most popular social media news blogs in Nigeria. This paper elaborated on an overview of news headlines, online journalism and blogs in Nigeria, news blogs and social media, news and the mass media, the language of print media, theoretical framework and conclusion. The paper recommends among others that the contents should be relevant, there is a need to preserve the culture of writing words in full, The purpose of news consumption should also be achieved, The goal of consuming the information in the news should not be stuck in the discursive aspect alone but also translate to holistic growth and development in the political, socio-cultural and ideological shifts in the orientation of the general public, and Further research should be conducted on areas like syntactic patterns of headlines and other linguistic studies that interrogate the grammar, phonology, semantics and stylistics of the headlines of newspaper and news blog headlines in general.