Photojournalism and Human Rights Documentation: A Study of Coverage of Farmers-Herders Conflicts in Southeast Nigerian Newspapers

Photojournalism occupies a unique communicative position in the documentation of human rights violations, with the capacity to generate emotional responses, shape public opinion, and mobilise humanitarian concern in ways that text alone cannot achieve. This study examined photojournalism's role in documenting the human rights dimensions of farmers-herders conflicts in Southeast Nigerian newspapers, with specific focus on how visual coverage frames victims, perpetrators, and humanitarian consequences. The study was grounded in the Visual Framing Theory, which extends classical framing analysis to examine how images select, emphasise, and contextualise aspects of social reality to promote particular interpretations. A content analysis design was employed, with a population comprising all published photographs related to farmers-herders conflict in five Southeast-focused newspapers between January 2022 and June 2024. A systematic sample of 318 photographs was coded for image composition, subject prominence, emotional tone, human rights relevance, and gender representation of victims. Findings revealed that conflict and destruction frames dominated photographic coverage, with victim-centred and humanitarian frames significantly underrepresented. Female victims and internally displaced persons were rarely depicted despite their disproportionate vulnerability in conflict situations. Captions and contextual text were frequently inadequate to support human rights documentation functions. The study concluded that Southeast Nigerian photojournalism underperforms its human rights documentation potential in farmers-herders conflict coverage. It was recommended that editors adopt deliberate editorial policies prioritising victim dignity, diversity, and human rights framing in conflict photography.
Keywords: photojournalism, human rights, farmers-herders conflict, visual framing, Southeast Nigeria