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- Description:
- This paper makes a case for the study of organizational communication as essential to development communication. It briefly traces the history of development communication and how mass media became synonymous with development communication. The assumptions underlying mass media's pre-eminence is revisited in order to make a case for organizational communication in an African environment. In the later sections, it describes a model for the study of development systems and organizational communication components.
- Date Issued:
- 1995-01-01T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Africa Media Review
- Description:
- The present relations of dependency of Third World countries on the industrilizcd countries are sustained by the well-known inequalities in technological resources between the North and the South. This article presents two levels for analysing the role of media technology in perpetuating this dependency syndrome: (1) the role of technology in the information and communications sectors; and (2) the impact of multinational corporations in news coverage, and, hence, on local culture, through their news agencies and other cultural products. It posits three questions to guide technology choice in Africa: (1) Why choose a particular technology? (2) To what end? (3) Which social group(s) will benefit from the technology economically, politically, and culturally?
- Date Issued:
- 1991-01-01T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Africa Media Review
- Description:
- The decade of the 1980s could, from a communications perspective, be typified as the period of 'social mobilisation'. Rather than expanding on the theoretical assumptions underlying the social mobilisation approach for development, this article discusses the consequences of the theoretical assumptions for the use of personal and mass media, as experienced in the African context.
- Date Issued:
- 1991-01-01T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Africa Media Review
- Description:
- The concepts of media as the fourth estate and the society's watchdog are popular among communication scholars. However, a consideration of the actualization of this concept is indicative of the media's failing in playing these roles. Very often, the media marginalise and disempower the masses whose causes they ought to promote. If the media were to truly play the watchdog role as the fourth estate, then both the structure and ownership of the media must be reviewed with a view to redressing the imbalances that make them tools for the disempowerment of civil society in Africa.
- Date Issued:
- 1996-01-01T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Africa Media Review
- Description:
- The paper discusses the themes of press responsibility and public opinion and their relevance within the current socio-political economic frameworks of African nations. It stresses the pertinent role of a democratized press in democratic political systems, and the role that the press can play within the democracies if they are conscious of the great responsibility that the current transition programmes of African nations places on them. In view of the rise of so many elites in Africa (those who almost always make headline news) and their great influence in mass media output as well as the economic considerations of many media organisations in news judgement, the paper reasserts the deep ethical and professional commitment of the mass media to protecting the underprivileged in society, interpreting their points of view and acting as the voice of the voiceless in society. The paper concludes that a holistic transition programme that recognises less government presence in mass media management and output is ideal for African nations. It also calls for more professional running of the press in Africa to ensure that they fit properly as society's watchdog, the fourth estate of the realm.
- Date Issued:
- 1994-01-01T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Africa Media Review
- Date Issued:
- 1982-01-01T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Critical Arts
- Description:
- This paper discusses the development of modern mass media as a necessary attribute of the evolution of an integral Nigerian nation out of the many traditional ethnic communities. It shows that the traditional media which were the precolonial channels of communication were limited in the conduct of national commerce, religion, education, politics and government. The paper, however, contends that the potentials of the traditional media have not been fully explored, and calls for research to establish what roles such media can play in modern politics, and in grassroot development generally.
- Date Issued:
- 1987-01-01T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Africa Media Review
- Description:
- This is a modest critique of the oppressive media laws in Tanzania, arising from the country's still-born socialism, which was adopted at the Arusha Declaration of 1967. The emperor worship syndrome characteristic of the first and, to a large extent, second generation of the autocratic presidents of African states, led them to muzzle the press and trample on their subjects' fundamental human rights like freedoms of expression, association, conscience, assembly and much else, is presented as the historical origin of a feeble press in the continent, including Tanzania. Taking Tanzania as the unit of analysis, the article argues that such undemocratic tendencies have no place in the modern world. The Tanzanian government is, therefore, invited to review its communication policies to make them more responsive to media development. The starting point should be the repealing of the obsolete media laws, to enable the media to play their adversary roles to the government objectively, authoritatively and independently. The paper then explores the various media legislations and concludes that the country has a vague communication policy which needs to be changed. In summary, the author philosophises and sympathises with the hackneyed view that there is no absolute freedom, therefore, in a way understands the limitations put in the way of the Tanzanian media by the new press bills.
- Date Issued:
- 1997-01-01T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Africa Media Review
- Description:
- This essay examines the role which the Nigerian media played in the transition from military rule to elected civilian government. It observes that the immediate political context of the transition was a post-Abacha liberalizing military administration as well as a resurgent civil society. This context meant that the media was able to play a relatively robust role in reporting and influencing the transition although the fact that the Abdulsalami Abubakar regime refused to repeal several "death decrees" targeted at the media remained a key constraining factor on the boldness and imaginativeness of the press in its reporting and monitoring of the transition. Furthermore, while the media, in all its plurality, offered coverage to all of the political parties, it was equally clear that the better financially-endowed People's Democratic Party (PDP) which also emerged as the dominant party was able to win greater advantage over the two other political parties, namely, the All People's Party and the Alliance for Democracy, through the purchase of advertisement space in the print and electronic media. On the whole, the Nigerian media played its role in the transition with credit and whatever weaknesses are observed in its performance and in the skewing of the outcomes of the transition owe more to the shallowness of the transition itself and less to the shortcomings of the media.
- Date Issued:
- 2000-12-01T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- African Journal of Political Science
- Description:
- Interest in the concept of civil society received a boost from the demise of communism in Eastern Europe, as more attention became focused on nongovernmental actors. It is not surprising that the concept has engaged the minds of many social scientists. Among the various interpretations are civil society as an "external or inferior state" as "bourgeois state", and as "state per se". In Africa, the concept is a useful tool in explaining some of the development problems that have persisted through the years, especially in the areas of democracy and political communication. In the illustrative case of Cameroon, it is argued that poor professionalization among journalists is a major factor in the media's failure to promote democracy and civil society. The prospects for civil society are dim in Cameroon and many other African countries.
- Date Issued:
- 1996-01-01T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Africa Media Review