What Effect? An Appraisal of Journalists’ Use and Perception of New Media Technologies in Nigerian Media Practice (original) (raw)

Online Journal of Communication and Media Technologies

In July 2016, the budget padding scandal hit the Nigerian airwaves. Abdulmumin Jibrin had accused Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara and House of Rep officers of trying to appropriate N40 Billion Naira through padding. Hon Abdulmumin Jibrin, Former Chairman of House Appropriations Committee and member, representing Kiru/Bebeji Federal Constituency, Kano State, made these allegations against the House of Representatives and its leaders, through his Twitter handle and more recently using his email and even Facebook accounts. The media war started after Yakubu Dogara, speaker of the Federal House of Representatives, announced the sack of Jibrin as the chairman, house committee on appropriation on Wednesday 20 th July. Jibrin was immediately replaced with Mustapha Dawaki Bala and Jibrin, in reaction, took to his Twitter page to make the wild allegations the next day and had since continued to use the social media for right to reply to post his own version of the story. The budget padding scandal cited above that erupted recently in the country is illustrative of one of the different ways the new media have influenced how news is gathered and reported in Nigeria and many other countries. Before the advent of the new media a reporter was given a lead or went out to find a story. Today many stories are received third hand through Facebook accounts, Twitter, Digs or Instagram, so that by the time a story is assigned to the reporter the story in some form or another is already out there in the social media. As these changes occur they continue to generate debates on the extent of effects on journalism practice in three key areas: nature of journalists; nature of news gathering and the way news is disseminated (Veglisetal,2005; Hermans ,2009; Fenton, 2010; Olakitan, 2012). Prevalent discourses on the issue, seem polarized as to the extent of effect of the new media on media practice, audience preference and audience use. And tend to often generalize these effects, muffling the differences arising from regional specificities from divergent cultures. It is