Media and Communication in Nigeria

Conceptual Connections, Crossroads and Constraints

Bruce Mutsvairo, Nnamdi T Ekeanyanwu, Bruce Mutsvairo, Nnamdi T Ekeanyanwu

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000511840
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Filología
• Subtopic: Estudios de comunicación

Communication is changing rapidly around the world, particularly in Africa, where citizens are embracing digital technologies not only to improve not only interpersonal communication but also the state of their financial well-being. This book investigates these transformations in Nigeria's booming communication industry.

The book traces communications in Nigeria back to pre-colonial indigenous communications, through the development of telecommunication, broadcasting networks, the press, the Nigerian film industry ('Nollywood') and on to the digital era. At a time when Western voices still dominate the academic literature on communication in Africa, this book is noteworthy in drawing almost exclusively on the expertise of Nigerian-based authors, critiquing the discipline from their own lens and providing an important contribution to the decolonisation of communication studies. The authors provide a holistic analysis of the sector, encompassing print journalism, broadcast journalism, public relations, advertising, film, development communication, organisational communication and strategic communication. Analysis of the role of digital technologies is woven throughout the book, concluding with a final section theorising the future of communication studies in Nigeria in the light of the digital media revolution.

Robust in its theoretical and methodological underpinnings, this book will be an important reference for researchers of media and communication studies, and those working on Africa specifically.

1 IntroductionRethinking communication studies in Nigeria: a methodological and theoretical critique

DOI: 10.4324/9781003208747-1

Bruce Mutsvairo and Nnamdi T. Ekeanyanwu

Introduction

This book focuses on the changing media and communication landscape in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country and the world’s 23rd largest economy. The goal of this book is to critically examine transformative stages in the field of communication with particular reference to Nigeria. We seek to historicise the field, tracing back to the pre-colonial era to understand the development of indigenous communications before and after the European arrival, moving to the development of telecommunications in the 1880s, the early expansion of broadcasting networks, the Nigerian film industry, the socio-political, economic and cultural factors surrounding the development of the press in the country, and the history of the Nigerian Broadcasting Commission (NBC) from its inception in the 1930s to recent changes leading up to the digital era. How are Nigerians benefiting from the shift to digital technologies? What challenges does the field of communication science face, both in theory and practice, in the most populous Black nation in Africa? What opportunities are available? What are the short and long-term implications of the recent unbundling of mass communication in Nigerian universities? And what does the future portend?

This book seeks to address the evolving nature of communication transformations in Nigeria. Not only do we probe the impact of digital technologies on Nigerian communities with the view of gaining a deeper understanding of theoretical and methodological underpinnings – past, present and future – but we also examine the dynamic interplay of history, communication and technology within the Nigerian setting. In putting these thoughts out, we believe this book will be an invaluable reference material for scholars, students and the global academic community, meeting their interests in media and communication studies, research and pedagogy within the Nigerian context.

Furthermore, we have innovatively gathered different communication scholars and academics of different orientations, training and general education to mirror their perspectives and find the points of agreement or disagreement with the aim of giving a holistic Nigerian view of the history, evolution, transformation and future of the communication studies/industry in the country. These communication experts all have industry experience and are now engaged in media training, education and scholarship, innovatively integrating their scholarly perspectives and insights with rich and diverse practical experience in the field. In addition, we have also consciously merged empirical and theoretical methods to present a rounded argument of the subject matter.

Another unique proposition of this book is the effort to capture the current narratives on all aspects of communication studies in Nigeria in one volume. Other related books may have focused on a few of these adjuncts but ours zooms in on the evolution, transformation and future of communication studies in Nigeria with a particular reference to all aspects of these facets, thereby giving a rounded examination of several sectors including print journalism, broadcast journalism, public relations, advertising, film, development communication, organisational communication and strategic communication.

Decolonising without using the word ‘decolonise’

This book is important because all of its contributors apart from the first editor, Bruce Mutsvairo, and Umar Suleiman Jahun, who is completing his PhD at the University of Sussex, by no coincidence, live and work in Nigeria. Most books on communication studies in Africa have largely been based on scholarship written by researchers based in the West, African or non-African. Even when there is nothing wrong with this, we believe it is important to give African scholars living on the continent a voice to write from their own perspectives, particularly in an era where decolonisation of communication studies (Moyo, 2020; Moyo & Mutsvairo, 2018) has slowly been gaining momentum across Africa and the Global South. It is also important to make sure that the data and literature that define the major argument of this collection come from within Nigeria and, by extension, from scholars who have deeper knowledge of the field by training, practice, research and scholarship engagements from within the Nigerian communication environment. By so doing, we are decolonising communication studies without using the word ‘decolonise.’

This book offers contemporary Nigerian communication scholars and practitioners an opportunity to critique the discipline from their own lens, seeking not only to contribute to current debates on communication ontologies in the Global South but also to provide long-term expectations that African communication scholarship should lead to the development of home-grown theories and epistemological narratives. Why should the continent of Africa, for instance, continue to be used as a testing ground for Western concepts and methods? We believe by selecting scholars based in Nigeria and situating their scholarly views in this book, we are making a very important statement when it comes to inclusion and the promotion of African intellectualism in global communication education. In essence, the re-imagining of Nigerian communication studies must be rooted in the emergence of African communication theories, constructs and methods that are capable of addressing the numerous African and Nigerian developmental challenges as well as projecting a truly African communication studies agenda and scholarship. There is no doubt that Africa, Nigeria included, has enough communication scholars, researchers, practitioners and thinkers that have the capacity to retool the African communication cosmology as well as project the new Afrocentrism in communication education and scholarship in the Nigerian context (Mutsvairo & Salgado, 2020).

For many years, African scholars have reluctantly accepted racial stereotypes linking them to unproven claims of laziness and incapacity. For the most part, this is based on attempts by some in the West to use quality as a gatekeeping tool, ultimately excluding important media and communication narratives from the South on grounds that they do not meet their “quality and excellence” benchmarks. That is not just wrong but it should be challenged. Something important doesn’t need to be rated through the prestige associated with the publisher where it appears. We should be asking who is setting these standards and on what grounds? What do quality and excellence really mean? Some publications have largely ignored scholarship from Africa. To its credit, 23 years since its establishment, Information Communication and Society (ICS), the discipline’s leading journal, published in early 2021 its first special issue entirely focused on the African continent and edited by Bruce Mutsvairo, Massimo Ragnedda and Kristin Skare Orgeret. While ICS should be applauded for giving Africa a voice, it just goes to show the challenges that lay ahead if African scholarship is to be accepted in mainstream Western journals and publishers. Some leading communication journals have yet to run articles let alone special issues focused on African scholarship owing to these aforementioned stereotypes.

We hope that books like this help bridge that noticeable scholarly gap by dishing out scholarly debates that are led by African scholars and challenging the aforementioned quality standards. Our aim is not to prove that African scholars have the ability to tell their stories. They surely have had several avenues to showcase their ability. Ours is a call for inclusion.

As such, we endeavored to recruit female scholars, who are mostly under-represented in volumes like this, particularly in Africa. With the experience we have amassed over the years, we believe it is time to work toward putting epistemologies and theories developed in Africa and other regions of the Global South on the map and equally challenge notions of theoretical superiority supported by some in the West. We also need to offer first-time publishing opportunities to emerging Nigerian communication scholars because they represent the future. All the work we do becomes irrelevant if it cannot be sustained. Early career researchers thus have a role to play in making that endeavour a reality.

It is important to highlight that notwithstanding the epistemic violence that colonial, Western and Eurocentric scholarship and standards have meted out to Nigerian communication studies, some self-inflicted wounds must heal for any methodological and theoretical rethinking to have any meaningful and lasting effects. For instance, the issues of poor funding of the Nigerian university system, poor remuneration of university professors, outdated curricula, lack of resources and over-bloated admission lists with people who have no business pursuing university education and are mostly unqualified, must be addressed. Additionally, we also have to be honest with ourselves as scholars. We cannot just blame the West for everything.

There is a visible problem among communication scholars of African heritage. Many are reluctant to cite or value the work produced by fellow African scholars. Instead, thanks to a long-established colonial mindset, some believe Western scholarship is more superior even when it relates to studies within their own specific African contexts. We theorise that this is caused by Western dominance in communication scholarship and Eurocentrism. Over the last three decades, several African scholars have joined the international fray championing Afrocentric discourses in communication and journalism studies, establishing a platform for dialogue and discussion on all issues of these disciplines. While collaborations between European and African scholars have proven to be successful, interdisciplinary research has also helped highlight some of the challenges facing the field as scholars from various fields such as anthropology, political science and sociology have been conducting studies related to all aspects of African communication research. Collaboration between scholars based in the ‘North’ and ‘South’ is key. The first editor’s involvement in this project demonstrates a commitment to such endeavours as he serves as the bridge between the North and the South: Western and Eurocentric scholarship and Afrocentrism in communication education and scholarship.

Disciplinary, methodological and epistemological debates in Nigerian communication studies

For many years, Nigerian communication scholars have argued that the nation’s communication curricula were heavily concentrated on mass communication education to the detriment of other forms of communication. Salawu (2009) has also long advocated the inclusion of indigenous concepts in Nigerian and African communication studies curricula. Not to be outdone, one of the major critics of Nigerian and indeed African communication education is Professor Opubor, who as head of the Department of Mass Communication at the University of Lagos in the 1970s, criticised the programmes’ great deal of emphasis on journalism and media studies (Taylor, Ogom Nwosu & Mutua-Kombo, 2004). Things are indeed changing. Owing to such long-standing criticism, the National Universities Commission (NUC) of Nigeria in January 2020 unveiled a new degree with seven majors (the eighth programme was added by December 2020) including Journalism and Media Studies; Public Relations; Advertising; Broadcasting; Film and Multi-Media Studies, Development Communication Studies; Information and Media Studies; and Strategic Communication, which will replace the current Mass Communication degree that accordin...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of contributors
• 1 Introduction: Rethinking communication studies in Nigeria: a methodological and theoretical critique
• PART I History and evolution of communication and journalism studies in Nigeria
• PART II Technologies, digitization and transformation in the Nigerian communication industry
• PART III Theorising the future of communication studies
• Index