Communications And Good Governance

Communications And Good Governance

Chapiter 1

Introduction

1.1 Study’s historical context

The most common type of interpersonal interaction needed for decision-making and interpersonal influence in businesses is communication.To this purpose, the second half of the 20th century saw the creation of a tradition of communication research and practice focused on the demands of Third World development (Melkote and Steeves, 2001:1).Working with people and communities at the local level will enable them to eventually enter and meaningfully participate in the political and economic processes in their communities and societies, which is the goal of development communication experts. This calls for grassroots organizing and communicative social action on the side of the poor, women, minorities, and other groups who have been persistently and disproportionately left out of the process of social change, all of which lead to poverty (Pg. 117).

Poverty has a clear impact on many lives, stifling happiness, destroying creativity, and limiting freedom. The consequences of this poverty also include lack of income, lack of jobs, harmful environmental conditions, subordination of women, a lack of health care facilities, and a lack of medicines.

Unfortunately, rather than the theft of riches by a select few influential members of the community, many governments in emerging nations have blamed poverty on a lack of wealth. Therefore, the government is determined to find foreign donors despite the fact that in a nation like Nigeria with abundant human capital and mineral resources, there is enough to go around if good governance prevails.

The most common perspectives on good governance center on the ideas of competency, accountability, and responsiveness. They emphasize the necessity of comprehensive citizen and civil society participation in governance and are based on effective communication and information exchange between individuals, governments, and other players. A favorable association between communication and good governance is implicitly inferred by positioning discourse, information distribution, and communication as essential elements of government.

1.2 Description of the Issue

In Nigerian history, the media has consistently been on the front lines of the fight to advance the country’s good governance. Obilade (1999:235) expressed the opinion that the “press in Nigeria constitutes an active force in the realization of the goal of the evolution of good governance in the continent of Africa,” lending support to this claim. The first, second, third, and fourth republics were all affected by this significant accomplishment of the Nigerian media. The Nigerian media made a concerted attempt to restore democracy even during the military era. In May 1999, this conflict ushered the country into the fourth republic. The mass media are expected to encourage people to participate in democracy as part of their constitutional duty. During the time period under study, the Nigerian media effectively illustrated this. For instance, the media sprang into action by raising awareness of the electoral process as soon as the Abdulsalami Abubakar-led government launched the transition program that ushered in a new democratic government.

The Nigerian media battled vigorously and successfully for the protection of the people’s fundamental human rights, ensuring that those whose rights are violated be brought before the law. Furthermore, all types of democracy revolve upon the mainstream media. This claim is based on the premise that in any democracy, the media serves as the primary marketplace for political ideas.

The Nigerian media’s performance over the years may be characterized as a mix of both successes and failures, though. This is due to the numerous obstacles the media must overcome in order to promote the hard-won democracy that the media battled and fought to restore. These obstacles prevent Nigeria’s democracy from being stabilized. The public, political parties, interest groups, and the government all exert ongoing pressure on the media. As a result of this pressure, the media is frequently pushed to take a side when covering major national events in order to advance the interests of a specific party or interest group. This study, which uses the Vanguard Newspaper as a case study, examines the role the media has played and is still playing in the socio-political and socio-economic reengineering of structures in a nation that is dealing with numerous obstacles that limit the role of media in promoting good governance in Nigeria.

Objectives of the Study, paragraph 1.3

This study’s overarching goal is to use communication and good governance as a case study to investigate. Other particular goals include:

1. To investigate the contributions made by the Nigerian media to effective government in the nation.

2. To investigate the connection between Nigerian good governance and the media.

3. To investigate the difficulties the media in Nigeria faces in promoting good governance.

1.4 Questions for Research

The following research questions are used to lead this study:

1. What functions has the Nigerian media been performing in advancing good governance in the nation?

2. What is the connection between Nigerian good government and the media?

3. What obstacles must the media overcome to advance good governance in Nigeria?

1.5 Research Propositions

The following presumptions serve as the study’s guidelines:

HO: The promotion of good governance and the media do not significantly correlate with one another.

Hi: The promotion of good governance and media difficulties are strongly correlated.

1.6 Importance of the Research

Up until recently, academics and development specialists paid little attention to one crucial topic in Nigeria: the media and good government. Since there is little literature on the role of the media and its effects on good governance, the few that have been evaluated have focused more on the general, as well as challenging, role of the media in a democracy. The primary contribution that this study makes to the growing body of knowledge about media and democratic relations is as a result. The study is therefore both important and timely. The lack of knowledge in this field will be lessened by a thorough investigation of this occurrence. Additionally, this study will be helpful to academics and students who seek to conduct additional research on the issues of good governance in Nigeria as well as the role of the media.

1.7 Purpose of the Research

Examining how the media affects the promotion of good governance is the study’s main objective. However, the case study’s scope is only the Vanguard Newspaper.

1.8 Restrictions of the Study

The results of this research are limited because the researcher was unable to collect opinions from all Nigerian media professionals. In actuality, just a small portion of the Vanguard Newspaper’s data population was sampled. Due to time limits, the researcher was unable to cover all the material that would have provided useful information for this study. This study’s limitations include the difficulty in locating media professionals and their resistance to collecting, filling out, and submitting the questionnaires as well as the expense of traveling throughout Lagos to gather opinions.

Definition of Concepts, Section 1.9

The study’s guiding principles are the following ideas.

Democracy is a type of government in which the political community’s ultimate authority rests with the people. Democracy, according to Oyovbaire (1987), is a system that seeks to achieve a generally acknowledged common good through the collective initiation and discussion of policy questions pertaining to public affairs and that grants authority to agents to carry out the broad decisions made by the people through majority vote. Abraham Lincoln’s definition of democracy, which states that democracy is “government of the people, by the people, and for the people,” is the most often used term today. This description is generally recognized.

Good governance is closely related to the ethical foundation of governance and must be assessed in light of any applicable standards and goals. It examines how a certain societal segment functions from the viewpoint of its acknowledged stakeholders, beneficiaries, and customers. Determining the core of the state, which is not only reflected in the constitution but also a function of religious beliefs and the nature of the issues the state is currently facing, is therefore necessary in order to describe government as democratic.

The mass media: For the sake of this study, both developed and Third World countries’ conceptualizations of the mass media are all-inclusive. It includes all forms of communication that are typically referred to as mass media. In any polity, regardless of its size, the mass media can be a mechanical device or mechanism and (ii) have a presumptive level or degree of social impact (Uyo, 1987). According to Blanke and Harolsen (1975), who used the first criterion, all mass media can be divided into two classes: (i) print media, including brochures, billboards, circulars, newspapers, news magazines, pamphlets, direct mail, skywriting, and any other technological tool that conveys a message to “the masses” by appealing to their sense of sight. Print media use the publication of written words and images to convey information. Then there are (ii) electronic media, which include (a) radio and audio recordings that engage the sense of hearing, and (b) television, movies, and video records that engage the senses of hearing and vision. Through sounds or visuals, broadcast media electronically transmit information.