News Coverage of Child Sexual Abuse Prevention Strategies in Kenya: A Content Analysis of Prime Time News at Citizen Tv

Abstract

The scourge of child sexual abuse continues to take an endless toll on Kenyan children despite efforts by the Kenyan Government, Sexual Offences Act (2006) as well as non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to combat the epidemic. The media has a social responsibility to educate, warn and inform the society on how to prevent child sexual abuse. By setting the prevention agenda to educate the public, children can learn to protect themselves from perpetrators. Thus, this study investigated whether electronic media coverage of child sexual abuse stories provided information that educated audiences to prevent the vice in Kenya. The study adopted an exploratory research design and mainly used quantitative approaches to analyze content that appeared during prime time television newscasts; Citizen News at 9 and Monday Special between January 2013 and December 2015. A list of 75 items aired during 9 O’clock news about child sexual abuse was compiled after a broad search from the digital asset management cataloging system at Citizen TV video library. The video clips were then coded using code sheets as the instrument of data collection. The items were purposively selected from all the 9 O’clock news for the period of three years. The data was then coded and analyzed using SPSS. The findings of the study indicate that there was a total of 75 news items about child sexual abuse during the period under study. The results revealed that 72% of the items did not cover any prevention strategy. Only 28% covered messages on how to prevent child sexual abuse. The study recommends that the media should put prevention of child sexual abuse on to the public agenda so as to help educate the public on prevention of sexual abuse against children.