ABSTRACT
Nigeria youths are perhaps vulnerable victims of
foreign television programmes transmitted to Nigeria. The manner in which the
foreign television stations represent the image of the Nigerian society appears
imbalanced. This could impact on the perception of the country’s image among
theyouths. The perception could lead to anti-social behaviour among Nigerian
youths.The study examined the influence of foreign television stations’
representation of Nigeria’s image on the perception of Nigeria’s image by
youths in selected universities in South-West, Nigeria.
The study adopted survey research design. The
population comprised 37,650 undergraduates of three selected universities in
South-West, Nigeria. Multistage sampling
technique was employed in the selection process. Simple random sampling was
used to select three states (Oyo, Ogun,Osun) and three universities, one from
each of the selected states in Southwest, Nigeria. A total of 15
schools/faculties were randomly selected from the universities. The sample size
of 1,500 undergraduates were randomly selected. A validated questionnaire
complemented by a Focus Group Discussion guide were used for data collection.
The Cronbach’s Alpha reliability co-efficient for the constructs in the
questionnaire ranged between 0.872 and 0.974. The response rate was 94.1%. Data
from the questionnaire were analysed,using Pearson Product Moment Correlation.
Data from the focus group discussions were content-analysed.
Findings revealed that there was a strong positive
significant relationship between youths’ perception of Nigeria’s image
representation and the nature of news stories disseminated by foreign
television stations on Nigerian society (r=-0.711,
p<0.05). There wasa strong positive significant
relationship between the selected youths perception of Nigeria’s image
representation and the predominant tone of foreign television stations’
contents on the Nigerian society(r= -0.778, p<0.05).
Findings from the focus group discussions revealed that Nigerian youths
perceived their country’s image the way foreign television stations represented
the country as a terror, poor, backward and corrupt society.
The study concluded that the type of news and the
predominant tone of foreign television stations’ programme contents formed the
basis for the perception of the image of Nigeria by the youths in the selected
universities. The study recommended that foreign television stations should engage in
investigative reporting to be able to truthfully and adequately cover Nigerian
stories in the right perspective. Parents, guardians and teachers should
inculcate values of patriotism into the
youths so that they can believe in their country.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the Study
From the beginning, communication has been an
integral part of the human society. It has taken many forms from the ancient
cave painting to mobile internet of the 21st century, facilitating
contacts between different cultures through travel and trade as well as war and
colonialism. Such interactions have
resulted in transporting and implanting ideas, religious beliefs, languages,
economic and political systems from one part of the world to another by a
variety of means that have evolved over millennia: oral and written language,
sound and images (Schramm, 1988). As the society developed from the traditional
through modern to the post-modern eras, communication developed to cater for
human needs at individual, group and societal levels. The advent and popularity
of mass communication have broken communication borers between societies and
countries with the mass media transforming the human society and their effects
felt across the world. Thus, media interest has grown beyond the conventional
practice to international standard resulting in media globalization. (Alao,
Alao & Oguchi , 2012).
Countries and cultures have long been in
communication across borders. In the 20th century, radio, television
and later, the internet accelerated this process. Broadcast television took pre-eminence from
the late 1940s (Schiller, 1969). Television is a domestic medium through which
every household has access to an increasing flow of information and
entertainment, using devices of sophisticated sources of images and information
(Miles, 1988). Television became an attractive medium such that between 1980s
and 1990s, the average daily period of viewing varied between 4.9 and 5.3 hours
per household and between 3.0 and 3.8 hours for each individual (Sharot, 1994).
Indeed, it is clear that television is central to the processes of media
saturation in the modern society. Television is an important mass medium in all
advanced industrialised countries and it is rapidly becoming so in the
developing world. Allen (1992) carried out a study on television and observed
that what people did with television was a topic worth considering in research
because television’s roles in everyday lives of people manifest in so many
different ways. He asserts that “today around the world, 3.5 billion hours will
be devoted to watching television” (p. 110). This
implies that television reaches a very large number of people, and
it is perhaps the most important source of common experience for countries of
the world that are divided by class, ethnicity, gender, religion, culture,
political system, level of advancement and other factors.
As a result of the influence of television at individual, group and
societal levels, discourse about television programmes among Nigerian youths is
a routine and important aspect of their everyday social interactions. At work,
in the home, in the street, in the bus or on campus, Nigerian youths talk about
the characters in soap opera, share latest fashion styles and discuss burning
issues raised in both international and local news broadcasts and
documentaries. What they discuss during such interactions is determined by the
contents of the media to which they are exposed, especially television being an
attractive medium that reaches its audience with an audio-visual appeal.
Meanwhile, the advanced societies of the West dominate the global cinema
and television sectors of the media industry. This is because big media
conglomerates are concentrated in this part of the world, especially the US and
Britain who control global media resources. Arguably, no country comes close to
United States in popularity on the world’s electronic entertainment stage. In
fact, looking at the global communication flow, information has been argued to
be disproportionately disseminated from the United States to the rest of the
world and critics described this pattern as one-way communication flow
(Padovani, 2008). The resultant effect of the domination of the media landscape
is unbalanced flow of communication from the West as Western image and ideas
are promoted to Africans, while the latter’s image is often portrayed in bad
light. Such image portrayal could have implications on the audience’s
perception of people, places and events relating to such developing countries
and societies.It should be noted that countries
of the world run international broadcasting for certain reasons. These include
enhancement of national prestige, promotion of national interest, religious,
ideological or political indoctrination, fostering of cultural ties, trade in
international markets and promotion of access to pay-television broadcasts
(Entman, 2004).
Kamalipour (2007) adds the following as part of
the motivation for international broadcasting in today’s digital age:
E-commerce in terms of trans-border trade, selling of culture and information
across borders, entertainment in terms of music, video, drama, personal and
group expression of identity, ideology and religion, promoting access to global
traditional media organisations. Due to these motivations, governments attach
great importance to international broadcasting. The implications of image
portrayal through the television medium to people’s perception cannot be
over-emphasised and this has generated debates due to the television influence
on peoples’ mental picture of the world.
In 1970, a major debate began
about this imbalance in global information flow and disadvantaged developing
countries called for a New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO)
that would address this imbalance in the communication patterns. Bamidele
(2011) observes that:
The New
World Information and Communication
Order (NWICO) is a campaign sponsored by the
United Nations Economic,
Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to counter media imperialism by
creating an information order that gives a more balanced view of developing
countries that has generally been by western press coverage(p.72).
The campaign led to the formation of a
Commission, headed by a former Secretary-General of the International
Commission of Jurists and Nobel Peace Laurate, Sean MacBride, to look at the
issues raised as regards imbalance global information flow. The Commission amongst
others was to make recommendations on how to make media representation more
equitable. The report of the commission, published in a book titled ‘Many
voices, One world’, listed the main international bottlenecks in communication
and summarised NWICO.s basic philosophy (Alao,Alao &Oguchi). In spite of
the recommendations of MacBride commission, the issue of free flow of global
information through the mass media remains perhaps not addressed. Most foreign
television stations’ programmes, news and information about the developing
nations, including Nigeria seem to be about wars, famine, drought, corruption
and poverty to mention a few.
In Nigeria, several efforts to correct the
wrong notions about the country by the Western media were demonstrated, for
instance,Federal government under General Ibrahim Babangida leadership
promulgated Decree No 15 in 1991 which established the Nigeria’s external media
, Voice Of Nigeria (VON). Since its inception, the organization reflected the country originality so that distortions
in the nation’s image held by the external world can be corrected. In 2004,
Obasanjo administration embarked on New Nigeria Image Project (NNIP), the
motive was to launder Nigeria image beyond the country shore against
misconstrued information disseminated about the country by the foreign media.
The campaign did so much to correct foreign lands bad impressions about
Nigeria. In addition, in 2009, the late Umaru Yar’Adua’s regime launched
another image laundering project tagged Re-branding Nigeria Project(RNP) which
the then Minister Of Information, late Professor Dora Akuiyili supervised. The
project amongst others tirelessly fought the deliberate misconceptions
emanating from the foreign media.Furthermore, the Buhari administration’s
Change Policy is as well crafted to re-orientate Nigerians against the
country’s brand eroders such as corruption, elections fraudulence, insurgency,
armed robbery, kidnapping, prostitution, hooliganism, child trafficking,
cyber-crime, militancy, exam malpractices, cultism and a host of others. The
government contented that in as much
that the country can rectify the aforementioned, the country’s negative
image shall be reduced if not totally
obliterated.
Foreign television stations often used both economic power and the
control of technology as a conduit pipe for legitimising their position and
policies. As the mass media, especially
television, gained more advantage over other medium of communication (Shaw,
1996), concerns became increased about the concentration of media power and its
impacts on the developing nations’ images. It is argued that through their
control of major international information channels, the foreign television
stations give exploitative and distorted views of Nigeria to the rest of the
world. Scholars further contend that under the guise of the free flow of
information, some governments and transnational television stations have tried
to undermine internal stability in developing nations including Nigeria,
violating their rights to sovereignty and national development (Masmondi,
1979). Foreign television stations perpetuated and strengthened inequality in
development with negative effects on the Nigeria’s image, polity and economy.
According to Masmondi (1979),
There
existed a flagrant qualitative imbalanced between North and South created by
the volume of news and information emanating from the developed world and
intended for developing countries and the volume of the flow in the opposite
direction. News which they filtered, cut and distorted, the transnational media
impose their way of seeing the world upon the developing countries (p. 72).
Debates on whether
foreign television stations are responsible for social, political, economic,
and cultural perception of their viewers in Nigeria or facilitate ill-actions
from Nigerian youths are established by media scholars such as Akintayo and
Adegoke (2015) who reported that:
Television programmes reflect a
society’s values, norms and practices as well as fads, interest and trends.
Western television programmes largely reflect the Western culture through their
programmes. Fashion TV and styles for example are entertainment stations that
deal with fashion and life styles in Western countries. These stations make
youths increasingly aware of fashion trends and there seems to be the urge to
try to keep up with the standards (p. 65).
Therefore,
the actions and behaviour of Nigerian youths as regards living in the country,
cooperating with the government to achieve developmental goals and even
participating in cultural and political processes may be a reflection of the
way the country’s image is represented by the foreign television stations,
through which their metal pictures of the country are shaped. There is no doubt
that Nigerian youths’ actions, behaviours and orientations are prone to foreign
television stations representation of the country, influenced by their
perception of Nigeria’s image as shaped by the stations’ programmes. To some
extent the foreign television programmes have become like cultural teaching
classrooms for Nigerian youths who watch Western television stations.
Obviously, foreign television stations are agents of cultural promotion but
those at the receiving end are developing nations including Nigeria and the
most affected audience is the perhaps the youth group. In the light of the
potentials of television to shape youths’ mental pictures about the world
through its programme contents, this study examines the roles of foreign
television broadcasting in shaping youths’ perception of Nigeria’s image
through the stations’ representation of the country’s image.
1.2
Statement of the Problem
The dominance of
news gathering and dissemination by foreign television stations and other media
organisations have caused disagreements between the developed and developing
nations, including Nigeria, since the 1970s . Giffard (1982) listed four areas
that have been of special concern to developing countries. First, more than
seventy five per cent of the non-local news contents in developing countries
media come from foreign television stations and news agencies and the former
are forced to see themselves and practically all issues through Western lenses.
Secondly, the Western information monopoly resulted in a heavy imbalance in the
flow of news with information moving predominantly from advanced countries to
developing nations. Thirdly, the West continues to maintain cultural
imperialism through its dominant position as supplier of news, information and
cultural fare to the developing world. The fourth area of concern is that
coverage of developing countries, with particular reference to Nigeria as the
most populous black nation, by the foreign media is often painted by
stereotypical portrayals of such countries’ internal happenings.
For these reasons, the Western media continue
to perpetuate unevenness in global information flow to the disadvantage of
developing countries. The various motivations for perpetuating this
Western-African divide justify McPhail’s (2006) accusation of electronic
colonialism against the West. He describes electronic colonialism as the
dependent relationship of poorer countries on the advanced nations,
institutionalised by concentration of communication hardware, software and
personnel in the latter. The resultant effect of the unevenness in the flow of
global communication is apparent in the divide in framing of issues between the
West and Africa in different spheres of life - culture, economy, science and
technology, environment, health and politics – to the advantage of the West.
Foreign television stations’ news flow to Nigeria has great effects on the Nigerian
society (Akintayo & Adegoke, 2015).The extent and direction of the way
Nigerian youths perceive their country’s image as portrayed by the Western
media attracted investigation. Therefore, this study was set out to investigate
how Nigerian youths perceive the country’s image as represented by foreign
television stations in their programmes.
1.3 Objective of the Study
The main objective of this study is to
investigate how Nigerian youths perceive the image of the country based on
foreign television stations’ representation of Nigeria’s image .The specific
objectives are to :
1. determine Nigerian youths’ assessment of the
nature of news stories disseminated by foreign television stations about
Nigeria;
2. examine
the implications of foreign television stations’ programme contents on the
image of Nigerian society as perceived
by the youths;
3. ascertain
the predominant tone of foreign television stations’ programme contents about
the image of the Nigerian society as perceived by the Nigerian youths and
4. determine
the implications of selected youths’ perception of foreign television stations’
programme coverage of Nigerian society.
1.4 Research Questions
This study was guided by the following
research questions :
1. What is the Nigerian youths’ assessment of
the nature of news stories disseminated by foreign television stations about
Nigeria?
2. Are
there implications of foreign television stations’ programme contents on the
image of Nigerian society as perceived
by the youths?
3. How can the
predominant tone of foreign television stations’ programme contents about the
image of Nigerian society be described
as perceived by the Nigerian youths?
4. To what extent are
the implications of selected youths perception of foreign television stations’
programme coverage of Nigerian society?
1.5 Hypotheses
The following null
hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance.
Hypothesis
One:
H0:
There is no significance relationship between Nigerian youths’ perception of
the country’s image and the nature of news stories disseminated by foreign
television stations about the Nigerian society.
Hypothesis
Two:
Ho:
There is no significance relationship between Nigerian youths’ perception of
the country’s image and the predominant tone of foreign television stations’
programme contents on the Nigerian society.
1.6 Significance of the Study
This
study provided empirical data on the perception of Nigerian youths about their
country’s image as represented by
foreign television stations programme contents. The study would be useful to
various stakeholders in many ways. It could shed more light on the foreign
media domination of the developing world, which debates have shown to have led
to imbalance in the flow of information to the benefits of the West. The study is
thus an avenue to lend a voice to the debate agitated by developing countries,
including Nigeria, on the issue. Also, apart from its contribution to the body
of knowledge on the controversial foreign media domination, this study could
provide an academic platform for other Mass Communication scholars who may be
interested in the foreign television stations’ influence on other societies’
images, especially the third world countries.
Moreover, the study could be a useful
reference material to parents and guardians who are concerned about Nigerian
youths’ moral uprightness as tool for national development. The study also exposed Nigerian broadcast regulatory
agencies to the pernicious effects of unimpeded flow of foreign contents into
the country. As a result, the study could expose the Nigerian society and
security operatives to the reality of television broadcasting as a source of
influence of youths’ actions and behaviours. In addition, it could call for the
review of the Nigerian broadcasting code, particularly on stipulations of the
minimum ratio of 70%-30% local-foreign programme contents. This study could
motivate every stakeholder to implement the enforcement of the code as
stipulated. Finally, the study would enlighten the public more concerning foreign
television stations’ programmes and the implications on the image of the entire
Nigerian society.
1.7
Scope of the Study
This
study was delimited in subject-matter to investigate the perception of Nigerian
youths of their country’s image as
represented in the foreign television stations’ programme contents. Particular
focus was placed on undergraduates in Nigerian universities within the
Southwest region of the country. Based on location, the selected states covered
in this study are three out of the six in the region: Oyo State, Ogun State and
Osun State. To this end, Three universities were targeted, each from the three
states namely; University of Ibadan (representing Oyo state), Federal
University of Agriculture, Abeokuta (representing Ogun state) and Adeleke
University,Ede(representingOsunstate).Moreover, the study scope
purposively selected foreign television
stations because they are more popular
with reporting Nigerian internal issues,
they are; Cable News Network (CNN),British Broadcasting Corporation(BBC),
Adjezzera, France 24,Euro News, New Delhi Television Limited (NDTV), Geo
News(GN), MSNBC, Deutsche Welle Television, The Voice Of America (VOA),Reuters
News World International, Sky News and Associated Press Television News (APTN)
with selected programmes such as News, documentary, interviews, discussions,
talk shows, and feature stories.
1.8
Operational Definition of Terms
1.
Perception:
This term is used in this study to refer to the views and opinions of the
Nigerian youths about the country’s image as determined by the meaning,
understanding or interpretation they derive from their viewership of foreign
television stations’ news and programmes and such perception may be favourable
- in support of the country - unfavourable - against the country - or
indifferent - neutral or showing no concern about the country.
2. Youths: Youths in this study refer to male and female
university undergraduates matriculated to study any of the first degree courses
on full time basis in Federal, State and Private universities in Southwest
Nigeria.
3. Representation: In the context of this study, representation
means the way the foreign media report issues and events about Nigeria in news
or portray the country in their programme contents, which may include as a
growing economy or democracy when portrayed in good light; or as a country of
corrupt, poor or backward people when portrayed in bad light.
4. Image:
This refers to the manner in which the Nigerian society is projected or
portrayed by the foreign television stations through their news and programme
contents and such image portrayal could be positive for instance, when news is
reported about an economic, a political or technological progress made by the
country; or negative when the image is portrayed as that of a nation of
corrupt, poor and backward people.
5. Foreign television:
In this context, these are television stations that are based in Europe and America
and engage in international transmission of programmes. They are stations whose
funding, ownership and operations are by Western interests of Europe and
America.
6. Federal Universities:
These are institutions of higher learning offering first degree courses in
different disciplines under the regulatory supervision of the Nigerian
Universities Commission (NUC), which are owned and funded by the Federal
Government of Nigeria.
7. State
universities : These are institutions of higher
learning offering first degree courses in different disciplines under the
regulatory supervision of the Nigerian Universities Commission (NUC), which are
owned and funded by States in Nigeria.
8. Private universities:
These are institutions of higher learning offering first degree courses in
different disciplines under the regulatory supervision of the Nigeria
Universities Commission (NUC), which are owned and funded by any individual or
corporate entity.
9.Undergraduates:
This term refers to male and female individuals of between the ages of 16years
and 30years, who are Nigerians by birth and resident and are admitted to run
Bachelor Degree programmes on full time basis in any of the selected
universities situated in Southwest, Nigeria.
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