Who asked what and how: A Content Analysis of Media Questions during President Mahama’s Press Conference at the Flagstaff House in Ghana.

                                                   By Etse Sikanku and Kwaku Botwe

How to cite: Sikanku, G.E., & Botwe, K. (2016). Content Analysis of Questions asked during President Mahama’s Press Conference at the Flagstaff House. Research Brief, Accra: Ghana

OR

 Sikanku & Botwe (2016) Research Report 1

*Please do not use without citation. For further details, please contact corresponding author at: etse.sikanku@gmail.com

1.0  Introduction

This research examined the nature of questions asked during President Mahama’s press conference on Tuesday, January 12, 2016. This was the first press conference of the year. Press conferences constitute an important political communicative apparatus in any deliberative democracy. They are both political communication events as well as media events because the president uses the opportunity to directly answer questions from journalists. 

As a tool for political communication, press conferences are different in the sense that they are rare and unique moments for direct engagement with the president on important issues of national concern.

With this in mind, we sought to examine the nature of questions asked by journalists using several indicators: (a) the media organizations who had the chance to ask questions (b) the topical areas/sectors of national concern covered by journalists (c) relevance of the questions (d) structure or composition of questions in terms of specificity, (e) structure of question in terms of it was double-barrelled or not (d) tone of the question in terms of civility and politeness (e) follow –ups (f) the body language of journalists. This research is significant in the sense that it is the first systematic attempt to content analyse a presidential press conference in Ghana in a systematic and social scientific manner.

3.0  Methodology

This research was conducted by using the content analytic approach to analyze questions asked by journalists during Ghanaian President John Mahama’s press conference on January 12 2016. This is the first study of this nature to be employed in Ghana. While content analysis has been applied to many forms of text or media discourse in Ghana no study has applied this approach to studying press conferences in Ghana in an empirical manner. All the major social scientific steps for conducting media content analysis were followed in undertaking this research.

4.0 General Results

A total of 26 questions were asked during the press conference. Some journalists asked one question while others asked more than one. Journalists who asked two questions included the practitioners from Ghana Palava, Kasapa fm, Two Freelancers, Emefa Apau from Class fm and Samuel Abloderpey Radio Gold. Joy fm was the only radio station which had two different journalists asking questions—Kojo Yankson and Evans Mensah. Both questions were on the issue of corruption. In fact, Evans’ question was a follow up to Kojo Yankson’s question. A tabular representation is seen below:

Table 1: Media Houses and Questions asked

Media House	Frequency	Percent
Joy fm	2	7.7
CITI FM	1	3.8
Graphic	1	3.8
Guide	1	3.8
Class	1	3.8
TV3	1	3.8
Palava	2	7.7
Starr fm	1	3.8
Unique	1	3.8
General Telegraph	1	3.8
Peace fm	1	3.8
Daily Democrat	1	3.8
Kasapa	2	7.7
Freelance Journalist	3	11.5
Insight	1	3.8
Government Portal	2	7.7
Bloomberg	1	3.8
Radio XYZ	1	3.8
Radio Gold	2	7.7
Total	26	100

4.1 Major Thematic Areas

Politics (n=7, 26.9%), the economy (n=7, 26.9%) and National security issues garnered the highest number of questions. This was followed by Social issues (n=2, 7.7%) while Health (n=1, 3.8%) , education (n=1, 3.8%) and energy (n=1, 3.8%) issues received the lowest amount of questions. There were no questions in other sectors such as sports and agriculture. 

Table 2:

Topics/ Themes	Frequency	Percent
Health	1	3.8
Politics	7	26.9
Economics	7	26.9
National Security	7	26.9
Social	2	7.7
Education	1	3.8
Energy	1	3.8
Total	26	100

4.2 Relevance of questions

The next major issue investigated in this research project was the relevance of the questions. In all, there were 18 out of 26 questions which were relevant constituting 69.2% while 26.9% of the questions were deemed not so relevant.

Table 3: Relevance of Questions

Relevance of Question	Frequency	Percentage
Highly Relevant	18	69.2
Moderately/Somewhat relevant	1	3.8
Not so relevant/Irrelevant	7	26.9
Total	26	100

4.3 Specificity of Questions

Questions were also examined in terms of their specificity.  From the table below 57.7% of the questions were found to be specific while 42.3% were found to be broad and to sweeping. A tabular representation for this variable is presented below followed by a chart.

Table 5: Specificity of question

Specificity of questions	Frequency	Percent
Specific	15	57.7
Not specific/sweeping	11	42.3
Total	26	100

4.6 Cross tabulation for Relevance of questions and specificity

In all 12 (66.6%) out of the 18 relevant questions were found to be both relevant and specific leaving six of them to be sweeping and too broad. Thus it was possible for a question to be relevant without being specific. This indicates that though journalists may touch on a relevant issue, the non-specificity of the question may not portend well for the answers generated. This does not help journalists adequately perform their role as mediators of public discourse of holding government accountable. Though this is not a bad percentage there is still room for improvement.

Table 9: Cross tabulation for Relevance of questions and specificity

Relevance of Question/Specificity	Specific	Not specific/ winding/ broad/sweeping	Total
Highly Relevant	12	6	18
Moderately/Somewhat relevant	0	1	1
Not so relevant/Irrelevant	3	4	7
Total	15	11	26

4.4 Form of question

Questions were investigated to find out if they were follow-up questions. Only three were follow ups. This included questions from TV 3 on the Gitmo issue, Class fm on the same Gitmo issue and Joy Fm’s second question was a follow up on an initial issue. Follow ups are deemed important in clarifying issues initially raised.

Table 5: Form of question

Form of question	Frequency	Percent
This was a follow up question	3	11.5
Non- follow up	23	88.5
Total	26	100

4.5 Body language

Non-verbal actions are seen as forms of communication. In line with the conceptual underpinning of the research, discourse is expected to be civil, polite and respectful. This variable helped us to know whether the body language of journalists showed civility. The results are represented in the table below.

Table 6: Body Language/Non-verbal

Gesture	Frequency	Percent
Hands in pocket	3	11.5
Decent	23	88.5
Total	26	100

  

5.0 Conclusions and recommendation.

 

All in all the Ghanaian media did not fair too badly though there is still room for improvement. There are several areas which if addressed could help improve the exercise. These include: (a) journalists should be selected to span the different regions of Ghana so that not just “Accra journalists” or a limited number of journalists are called upon to ask questions and (b) journalists should cover a variety of national issues and not just constrict themselves to a few issues. In addition one area that was lacking was in the specificity of questions. Questions should be well researched and well premised in order to make them specific, biting and top-notch. Hopefully this would help journalists fulfill their mandate of holding government accountable on the specifics of national issues.  Also the format of the press conference should allow for follow-ups. In the absence of this journalists can serve as their own peer-reviewers by following up on questions which didn’t receive adequate responses from the president. The report also suggests that press conferences should be held regularly to help promote direct presidential engagement with journalists and by extension the general public. This would help improve accessibility of journalists to the president, demystify the presidency as well as promote deliberative democracy within Ghana.