Abstract: The study considers the social media as a new public sphere where all the keepers of the society as a realm, are kept under some sort of watch as well, in terms of public scrutiny of their actions and inactions. Social media have offered internet users across the globe various discursive spaces with measurable degree of economic and sociopolitical impact. The objective of the study is to explore the social media as a new public sphere and its potential as the fifth estate of th...
Abstract One of the characteristics of communication is that it is irreversible. Once messages are sent, it cannot be taken back. In the age of constantly evolving sophisticated information technologies, information or messages go viral beyond ones intention and estimation. The mutating coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) has become a global phenomenon with its attendants effects on global economic and sociopolitical life of most nations. The pandemic has pushed the health sector to the ed...
Virtual Theater provides a way for remote people to watch TV or movies together. It is an onlinevideo file synchronization tool, which enables users to enjoy the company of their friends in the "online cinema" setting. We think it will help those who like to watch television or movies series with friends or family, but their circumstances make it difficult for them to do so. The best social networking website that allows users to watch popular videos and chat live with friends online. With...
ABSTRACT Dependency is a term that refers to one of the strands of the imbalances in international news flow between the West and less developed countries (LDC). Western news agencies, it has been observed, have cornered the whole process of global newsgathering so totally that LDC media depend on them to get almost any news about the West and other LDC. Since these agencies carry mostly negative news about LDC, dependency, it has been alleged, promotes the dissemination of negative news abo...
ABSTRACT The study examined newspaper coverage of child labour. The main objective was to study the frequency, nature and forms of child labour coverage by the Daily Graphic. The study also set out to establish the type of story and source of child labour issues and covered by the newspaper and to identify the main actors of the child labour issues. A quantitative method that specifically used content analysis was chosen to evaluate child labour stories in the Daily Graphic. The findings from...
ABSTRACT Soap operas are among the most popular TV genres in the United States and around the world (Allen 1995). As the world moves into a more technological paradigm, the uses and gratifications people have for watching television differ. While entertainment is the most manifest and visible function of television, research has identified other uses and effects related to its socializing role. A breadth of scholarly literature have already analyzed the influence of soap opera viewing on var...
ABSTRACT This study explored the role of the communicators of Newmont Ghana Gold Limited and Gold Fields Ghana Limited in the execution of the corporate social responsibility (CSR) goals of their companies. It was based on the logic of the excellence theory and stakeholder theory. These suggest, in effect, that symmetrical, participatory engagement with community members best enable the determination, promotion and implementation of appropriate CSR initiatives. Also important to this study we...
ABSTRACT This study is a quantitative analysis of the level of social media addiction among students of the University of Ghana. Using the Uses and Gratification theory and Media Systems Dependency theory as the theoretical framework, the study investigated the level of addiction to the various social media platforms among a sample of Students of the University of Ghana. The objective of the study was to see whether social media addiction existed among students and the extent to which they w...
ABSTRACT This study examined how social media is being used as a platform for political information. The study was guided by three main objectives: (i) to find out the extent to which University of Ghana students use social media as a platform for accessing political information, (ii) to investigate the preferred communication channels used in accessing political information, (iii) to understand whether University of Ghana students view social media as a credible and reliable platform for p...
Abstract This research investigates the influence of the Internet on the political participation of youth in the Ikeja Local Government Area of Lagos state, in Nigeria. The study was hinged on technological determinism; the data was gathered through survey and in-depth interview; through multistage sampling, questionnaires were administered on 600 youth in Ikeja. Findings show that using the Internet over a long period of time will result to some form of political participation. Thus, the you...
ABSTRACT Media coverage of political crises, especially in a terrain fraught with the increasing influence of godfatherism, ownership and political affiliation has a serious consequence on the society. The political feud between Late Chief Lamidi Ariyibi Adedibu and his „political son‟, Senator Rashidi Adewolu Ladoja in Oyo State, Nigeria (2005-2007), provided a typical example of godfatherism, and media coverage of the conflict typified ownership influence on news media operations. Ancho...
Abstract The 2015 Lagos State governorship campaign of the All Progressives Congress (APC) used sociocultural frames conjuring indigeneity and modernity to attract political attention and support. Constructed through religious, economic, cultural and humaninterest frames, a blissful future encapsulating the hopeful ethos of the city was projected. Reflecting and conscientizing their messianic aspirations, this existentialist paradigm attended to the hopes of the people for better living cond...
Abstract This study investigates trends in media gatekeeping research, specifically in terms of research methods and theoretical application. Through a meta-analysis, 128 media gatekeeping-related studies purposively drawn from communication-based journals (published between 2000 and 2008) were content analysed. The findings reveal a progressive drift from quantitative method (38.3%) towards qualitative method (57.0%): a deviation from previous submissions that communication researchers pref...
Abstract Selection of photographs is part of the complex process of creating the multimodal textual elements that news editors use to represent and interpret social reality. This article, guided by Aristotle’s golden mean and Halliday’s theoretical notion of metafunctions, used critical visual analysis to examine the nature of photographs that news editors of Nigerian newspapers selected and used to frame news stories about acts of terrorism by the Boko Haram sect. The pattern establishe...
Abstract Several people in Africa are discontent with the nature of governance, leadership and socioeconomic issues that plague the continent. These grievances are expressed through protest music, which draws attention to human dissatisfaction due to colonial and post-colonial oppressive rule. As a critical communication genre, protest music depicts the elites as architects of socioeconomic degradation. The paper examines socio-political climate in selected African countries. It describes th...