Information cues of agricultural advertisements in Nigerian daily newspapers

Abstract

The sudden appearance of some elites as new entrants into the farming enterprise necessitates the diversification of the methods employed by extensionists in disseminating agricultural information, as educated farmers tends to benefit more from literacy based extension materials including newspapers. Hence, the study set to investigate the information cues of agricultural advertisements in Nigerian daily newspapers. Information cue was investigated since it is the actual message or idea of any agricultural advertisements. The study was a content analysis of 1800 editions of daily newspapers selected through random sampling process from the editions published continuously in Nigeria from January 1, 1985 to December 31, 1994. Explicitly, a total of 200 days were randomly chosen and nine newspapers published on the selected 200 days were content analysed for agricultural advertisements. The result revealed that majority of the agricultural advertisements have Product prices and Location, Product utility and Product description while product capacity and product process were rarely used. Also, specific information cue were prevalent in the advertisements of particular agricultural products and services and there was no significant variation in the information cues of agricultural advertisement overtime. However, there were indications that farmers may likely obtain necessary information that may benefits them from the advertisements of agricultural products and services.

Key words: Agricultural advertisements; information cues, newspapers, Nigeria

Moor Journal of Agricultural Research Vol.4(2) 2003: 260-265