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- Description:
- This a case study of the Nigerian communication situation which examined the efforts by this developing country towards the mobilisation of domestic resources to finance communication industry. The study revealed that except, during the period 1981-1985, planned public investment in the communication sector has been moderately high at a level of 6.1% of aggregate ex ante expenditure. For the period 1960-1980, actual communications expenditure as a ratio of actual total expenditure was lower at an average of 4.5%. Total sector performance measured by the degree of resistance to plan distortions was lower for the communication sector relative to aggregate performance throughout the twenty four year period beginning in 1962, except during the second development plan period between 1970-1974. The trend in domestic public financing appears to have been dictated by two factors, namely the philosophy of economic planning and the fluctuations in economic fortunes. The oil book of the mid 1970s prompted the largest planned allocation of 9% during the period 1975-1980, although realized expenditure "fell slightly below to a level of 7.2%. The article observes that these observed trends show clearly that there does not seem to have been any strong commitment by the Nigerian government to communication services to meet the needs of a significant portion of the population, especially those in the rural areas, and notes that this situation is not likely to change soon due to that country's present poor economy and the overemphasis by the government on market forces.
- Date Issued:
- 1988-01-01T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Africa Media Review
- Description:
- This examines the 'domination hypothesis' of the critical/conflict theories, vis-a-vis the structural functional perspective. It tries to put the two perspectives side by side and show how they stand up to objective analysis, and/or are related to each other. It also draws attention to the time-honoured view of many communication scholars that analysis of the power of the mass media should not be predicated on the principle of "all or nothing", that the media are not all-dominating; neither are they all-liberating; that the media can be used for good or for evil, depending on the socio-political, economic and cultural environments in which they operate. This requires an examination of the relationship between economic and socio-political power structure and mass media utilization as well as the impact of this relationship on the effect of the media on the public.
- Date Issued:
- 1988-01-01T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Africa Media Review
- Description:
- This paper discusses the lineage of British cultural studies in relation to its historical antecedents in Britain and Germany, and with regard to developments in the USA, South America and Africa. Cultural and media studies are contrasted with American administrative research and the 'mass society' thesis. Cultural studies seek emancipation; administrative research contributes to social control. The paper ends with a discussion of African cultural theorists and their application of Marxism in anti-colonial struggles on the continent. Some of the problems evident in such scholars and activists as Cabral, Fanon and Ngugi wa Thiong'o are examined. The paper argues that the history of cultural studies during the 20th Century is a history of the ideological mobilisation of the term 'culture*
- Date Issued:
- 1995-01-01T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Africa Media Review
- Description:
- This paper presents a challenging and radical contribution to the debate about media laws and politics in Kenya. The internationalist universalist dimension is critical and eye-opening. It is a lampoonery of the dichotomised 'them' against 'us' axis upon which the discourse on media legislation reforms revolves. Instead, the author recommends that the debaters should embrace an important trilogy: the state, the media and the citizen. This, the author argues, will help in removing the debate away from the infrastructure of a free media as the only bone of contention, to include the 'spirit" of the media laws. The interest of the argument, therefore is to create a people-centered and responsive media. The people are integral stakeholders in the media industry, and as is, it is argued, must be as protected by the constitution as the media rights. The foregoing premise logically lends itself to the conclusion that media rights are human rights. If so then the author insist that the debate about media reforms is ill-informed if it doesn't include constitutional reform. But he goes past this to embrace a universalistic approach to the review of media laws. This is consistent with the paradigm shift in the development and application of the modern human rights laws and international politics, which started with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), the Genocide Convention (1948), the Geneva Convention of 1949, the Convention of Refugees (1951), the International Government on Civil and Political Rights (1966) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966). Within these internationally binding legal instruments, the author says, the media can find supportive articles for their demand for the inclusion of media rights as human rights. In this new internationalist thinking, the nationalistic or territorial approach to human rights issues have been found to be wanting as concerned governments have repeatedly violated national laws with impunity. There is no guarantee that national media laws will not be derogated by the despotic regimes again. Having traced the origins of the universalisation of human rights to the wartime atrocities of Nazi regime, the paper contends that the media today is an important international diplomatic player in conflict prevention, management and resolution to be left at the mercy of the draconian whims of an authoritarian government. The author declares that freedom of expression is the first freedom. Therefore it ought not to be negotiable. The paper laments mistreatment of the Kenyan journalists and their institutions by the powers that be.
- Date Issued:
- 1997-01-01T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Africa Media Review
- Description:
- This article surveys the relationship between the mass media and the government in Tanzania with respect to the implementation of the country's foreign policy. It argues that although there is a unanimous acknowledgement of mass media's role in the conduct of foreign affairs worldwide and even among Tanzania's leadership, a lingering suspicion of journalists persits among most government officials which makes them withhold vital information from the country's local mass media. It recommends, among other things, an open dialogue between the officials of the Foreign Ministry and the press in the effort to forge a working relationship that would facilitate wide debate in the conduct of foreign affairs and international issues as it is the case in a socialist democracy.
- Date Issued:
- 1989-01-01T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Africa Media Review
- Description:
- Despite the prevalence of mass media institutions and 'paraphernalia' in Nigeria, the Nigerian masses still remain marginalized and denied their right to communicate through the conventional mass media. This is due to the structure of mass media ownership and distribution which reflects pro-urban concentration and bias. This article argues that given this reality, one cannot legitimately and accurately talk of 'mass' communication in Nigeria since the media of mass communication is used mainly to talk to the masses rather than with the masses; neither are they used by the masses themselves to talk with each other. To this extent, therefore, there is a state of 'mass incommunication' in Nigeria, a state which calls for urgent change through democratization of the mass media.
- Date Issued:
- 1990-01-01T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Africa Media Review
- Description:
- A review of "Communication and class struggle. Vol. 1" by A. Mattelart and S. Siegelaub, "The geo-politics of information" by A. Smith, and "Whose news? Politics, the press and the Third World" by R. Righter
- Date Issued:
- 1981-01-01T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Critical Arts
- Description:
- The national communication systems of Africa lack articulated and formulated policy objectives to guide in decision-making that would reflect national orientations and ideological base. This article has attempted to propose a 12-stage theoretical paradigm in the process of problem identification and solution in ideological evolution within the context of the African mass media systems. As models are indispensable tools in the execution of a system's functions within the purview of public policy, such as the mass media, the theoretical paradigm on ideological evolution is, therefore, designed to point out the complementarity of theory and practice in information packaging. This article presupposes that media policy parameters are not only determined within the ideological directives of their society, but are also dependent variables of the larger policies that emanate from the ideology of their society. It is within such a setting that the contents of the national communication systems in Africa should function as microcosms that reflect the thinking of the macrocosmic entity. The article also established that through surreptitious means, there is overwhelming evidence of the prevalence of external ideological influence of Africa's former colonial overlords in most of Africa's mass media systems, South of the Sahara.
- Date Issued:
- 1991-01-01T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Africa Media Review
- Description:
- This paper examines mass media bias in Nigerian political communications. It argues that ownership of the mass media in Nigeria tends to determine how they are used for political communications in the country. Other factors, such as ethnicity, religion, literacy, language of communication, legal limitations, political and socio-economic conditions, are also considered. The paper maintains, however, that the fact of ownership is not only the key which determines how the mass media are used for moulding the citizen's perception of political reality in the country, but that it is also a more precise means of understanding and investigating the role of the press in political stability or instability, national integration or disintegration. It concludes that as Nigeria approaches a third attempt at democratic rule in socio-economic conditions which are less propitious than in the past, there is a need for the Nigerian mass media to operate in a way which contributes to national integration. It suggests the need to restructure the media ownership pattern and to establish a Nigerian Media Advisory Council.
- Date Issued:
- 1991-01-01T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Africa Media Review
- Description:
- President Barack Obama addresses the graduating class of the University of Michigan at the Spring 2010 commencement ceremony in Ann Arbor, MI. Obama reflects on the founding of the country, civility in the media, and the opportunities the graduates have to influence change in the world. He suggests the proper role of government is to do what the people cannot do for themselves.
- Date Issued:
- 2010-05-01T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- G. Robert Vincent Voice Library Collection