The COVID-19 pandemic is causing incessant disruption to the social and economic lives of societies. Public health and crisis communicators have recommended some best practices in crisis and emergency risk messaging for effective health messages during pandemics. Thus, this study utilized seven crisis and emergency risk messaging best practices to qualitatively analyze 14 speeches delivered by the Ghanaian President on the COVID-19 pandemic in the country to demonstrate how the speeches conveyed information about the pandemic to the public. The study found that all seven best practices (i.e., explain what is known, explain what is not known, explain how or why the event happened, promote action steps, express empathy, express accountability, and express commitment) were demonstrated in all the 14 speeches. Implications for practice are discussed.
Article 162, subsection 5, of the 1992 Constitution of Ghana states that "all agencies of the mass media shall, at all times, be free to uphold the principles, provisions and objectives of this constitution, and shall uphold the responsibility and accountability of the Government to the people of Ghana". Using this constitutional provision that gives the media the power to serve as one of the agents to ensure accountability, this article discusses the media exposé of judicial corruption in Ghana by using the recent video evidence of the investigative journalist, Anas. The article considers issues of judicial corruption, the causes, consequences as well as their ethical and theological dimensions. It posits that those who pervert justice through corrupt practices, will eventually be named and shamed. The article concludes that when the media play their role by respecting high journalistic standards, the cause of justice will be served.
The study explored how the interactive attributes of new media technologies influence thegratification-seeking behaviour of millennials. Using a mixed methods approach, it employed asurvey and focus group interviews to collect data from university students. From a population of2 400 university students from the Political Science Department of a renowned public universityin Ghana, 400 students were systematically sampled for the survey, while 40 students werepurposively selected for focus group discussions. The findings indicate that the interactive featuresof the technologies produced emerging social and psychological gratifications in millennialsby projecting them as purposeful, and active in deploying symmetric political communicationrepertoires. The practical implication of this is that political leaders need to invigorate their electoralcommunication repertoires both in substance and in depth by deploying the heuristic attributes ofthe new technologies to facilitate the awakening of visceral responses in millennials and get themto engage in e-politics.
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