INFLUENCE OF FREE READERS’ ACTIVITIES ON THE CIRCULATION OF NEWSPAPERS IN NIGERIA (A case study of Uyo Metropolis)

Abstract

The study examined Effect of Free Readers’ Activities on the Circulation of Newspapers in Nigeria (A case study of Uyo Metropolis) with the intention to know why people gather every morning at Plaza newspaper stand Ikot Ekpene rd Newspaper stand and other newspaper stands to know the latest information, locally and nationally and how the newspapers contents they are reading are affecting and influencing them. To know the effect of free readers’ activities on newspapers sales volume and circulation. While it also aim to examine whether free readers’ activities have negative effect on newspapers sale volume. All respondents read one newspaper or the other on a daily basis because respondents were deliberately selected from three major newspaper stands in Uyo. Most of the respondents visited newspaper stand to read newspaper because of news update on current social political matter in the country and beyond national borders. It is also revealed that newspapers’ contents influence readers a lot because it expose them to different issues ranging from political, economic, education, entertainment even to the sport while language of newspaper greatly determines it readerships  as most newspaper writing in local language will have local readers which majority of youth and students will find very difficult of read because of decline in local languages, also such newspaper cannot be read out the native language thereby reduce the circulation and income of such newspaper house. The study employed survey research method to elicit data from the respondents and one hundred and twenty respondents were drawn through non-probability sampling method. It is recommended that government should increase the salary of worker so that majority of them afford buying at least a copy of a newspaper every day.  Job should be provided for the millions of unemployed to improve the standard of living of Nigeria youth.