Newspaper Photographs and Election Coverage: A Study of Telugu News Papers

Abstract

During the race to meet the news value of timeliness, the editors are opting for in-depth analysis, background information, unique coverage, richness of narrative and better visuals which was visible in the pages. The necessity and significance of mass communication is expanding worldwide; even in the least technologically advanced countries of the globe where the media often sets the political agenda of that particular nation (Gupta and Ranjit, 1987). The researchers tried to find out how the top newspapers in Andhra Pradesh published photographs during the coverage of elections in 2019. Efforts were made to identify what type of photographs were selected  in general as well as in political categories and what kind of agenda they preferred to set in  2019 elections. The study attempted to analyze the tone and directional analysis of the subjects of photographs published by newspapers. Four newspapers were selected and the content of three months of peak time of elections i.e. in the months of March, April and May of 2019 i.e., during elections was analysed.  When the subjects were studied and compared to with one another it has been observed that politics and development got good coverage. In that also in majority time favorable tone was adopted by newspapers in the coverage of photographs followed by unfavorable and neutral nature. The directional analysis showed that the newspapers preferred photos with positive shades rather than the negative angles.