Foreign Television Stations’ Representation and the Perception of Nigeria’s Image
Chapter One
Objective of the Study
The main objective of this study is to investigate how Nigerian youths perceive the image of the country based on foreign television stations’ representation of Nigeria’s image. The specific objectives are to :
- determine Nigerian youths’ assessment of the nature of news stories disseminated by foreign television stations about Nigeria;
- examine the implications of foreign television stations’ program contents on the image of Nigerian society as perceived by the youths;
- ascertain the predominant tone of foreign television stations’ program contents about the image of Nigerian society as perceived by the Nigerian youths
CHAPTER TWO
REVIEW OF LITERATURE
Conceptual Review
The constructs and concepts related to this study are hereby extensively discussed in this sub-section.
Conceptualizing Perception
Every time, different stimuli within our environment seem to be stimulating human sense organs. These stimuli are accepted by our sense organs and are instantly converted into sensations. These sensations are thereafter transmitted to the concerned sensitive parts of the brain. Consequently, the brain interprets the sensations and understands what the stimuli are. Hence in understanding the environment around us, attention occurs first followed by sensation and finally interpretation by brain. The process of knowing things through the senses and the interpretation of stimulus is known as perception. Perception as a concept under the science of psychology is not susceptible to a single all-encompassing definition. Perception has been defined in so many ways that it is hard to come up with a single working definition. Although the definitions are many, it is not too difficult to reconcile them.
Perception is the mental or cognitive process of discerning or recognising (something) through the senses (Webster, 2010). It is the process of being aware of, recognising and understanding a stimulus – a message, an issue, event or a personality – on the basis of which an opinion and/or attitude is formed about him/her. Arens, Weigold and Arens (2008) define perception as the way people sense, interpret and comprehend various stimuli in personalised manners. Stimuli refer to various information received through the sense organs of sight (eyes), sound (ears), smell (nose), touch (skin) and cognition (brain). Within the purview of this study, stimuli are the various information received from news, presented through narrative frames and understood in a particular way. Perception of various stimuli may differ among individuals across different stages of the process – attention, comprehension and recall. Fagbohungbe and Longe (2012) says Perception entails integrated approach and both physiological and psychological processes. Hence, perception, according to them, is the process of becoming aware of events, objects, objectives, quantities, qualities, situations or relations through the sense organs.
International Broadcasting: Concept and Evolution
International broadcasting is a complex and fast growing sub-field within the major field of communication and media studies. It encompasses the issues of culture and cultural commodification (the turning of cultural products into commodities), the diffusion of information and news broadcasting by media empires around the globe and the challenges faced by the developing countries in the light of these processes. According to International Telecommunication Union (ITU, 1999a);
The world is on the thresh hold of a new industrial revolution: a revolution which promises to be at least as significant as that which has brought most of the growth of the world economy in the past two centuries, a revolution which promises to have just as far reaching an impact on a wide variety of aspects of life, and a revolution with global reach. Telecommunication is at the epicentre of this revolution (p. 5)
CHAPTER THREE
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Research Design
Research design refers to a plan of action, framework or specification that guides a researcher in collecting, analysing and interpreting observations in a particular study (Frankfort-Nachmias & Nachmias, 2009). The main objective of this study is to investigate Nigerian youths’ perception of the country’s image representation by foreign television stations. To achieve this objective, the study adopted the mixed method research design that combined survey research method as a quantitative technique with focus group discussion (FGD) as a qualitative technique. Survey method, according to Babbie (2001), is “probably the best method available to the social researcher who is interested in collecting original data for describing a population too large to observe directly” (p. 239). Survey is relevant to this study because it is the systematic collection of data about variables related to the subject matter of a study from a sample or proportion of a given population in order to understand how the population reacts to, behaves or feels in relation to the phenomenon under investigation. Thus the method afforded the selection of a proportion of the entire population with a view to arriving at a generalization about the whole population. Based on the above mentioned reasons, descriptive survey research design was adopted for this study.
Population
The population of this study consisted of all undergraduates in selected public and private universities situated in Southwest, Nigeria, as at the time of this study, totaling 37,650 university undergraduates as obtained from the universities’ websites. The population consisted of undegraduates in federal and private universities located in three states of the region namely, Oyo, Ogun and Osun states. Thus, to determine the study population, this study obtained and calculated the students’ population figure for each of the selected university from its website.
The population distribution of students in the selected universities as presented in Table 3.1 shows that University of Ibadan representing Oyo State had a population of 20,000, which constitutes 53.1 percent of the total; Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta representing Ogun State had a population of 15, 650 undergraduates, which constituted 41.6 percent of the total; and Adeleke University, Ede representing Osun State had a population of 2,000 undergraduates, which accounted for 5.3 percent of the total population of the study.
CHAPTER FOUR
DATA ANALYSIS, RESULTS AND DISCUSSION OF FINDINGS
Presentation of Results
Analyses of the responses obtained in respect of the respondents’ demography are presented in Table 4.1.
CHAPTER FIVE
SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Summary
Nigeria is one of the Third World countries that suffer horrible description of her internal events as a result of misrepresentation by foreign television stations, especially as derived from information that have to do with the nation’s image. Nigerian youths are arguably the most vulnerable victims of this mentioned trend. The impact of these global television on Nigerian youths is significantly strong due to the ability of the foreign media to transmit news on new developments, new entertainment and knowledge enriching programmes from developed countries from where the messages are generated and transmitted to developing countries including Nigeria.
Nigerian youths of the 21st century depend on foreign media especially television stations and the internet because of the former’s attractiveness and the latter’s easy accessibility and interactivity. The youths’ continuous patronage of foreign television programmes seems to have placed them in the right position to examine Nigeria’s image representation as described by the foreign television stations. This research work, therefore, investigated youths’ perception of Nigeria’s image as represented in foreign television stations’ news and programmes. The study sought to determine Nigerian youths’ views and opinions about Nigeria’s image based on the way the country is represented by the foreign television stations, with particular focus on university undergraduates in the Southwest geo-political zone of Nigeria.
The study population comprised 98,250 university undergraduates out of which 1,250 were selected as sample size from the University Of Ibadan, Federal University Of agriculture, Abeokuta, Lagos State University, and Adeleke University respectively. In order to accomplish the objectives of the study, four research questions and two null hypotheses were set in line with study objectives. To get answers to the research questions and test the hypotheses, selected university undergraduates (as mentioned above) were chosen as population of study. The sample size consisted of 1,250 university undergraduates scietifically selected from four universities from Oyo State, Ogun State, Lagos State and Osun State. However, out of 1,250 questionnaire administered, 88 were either not properly filled or returned attended to, hence, they were not analyzed. A total of 1,162 copies of the questionnaire, which constituted 93% of the total returned and analysed in the study. Data generated from the sample were analyzed using the Statistical Products and Service Solution (SPSS) version 21and findings were discussed.
This study adopted the dependency theory, cultural imperialism theory, and cultivation theory as theoretical foundation. Descriptive survey research design was adopted in the study while questionnaire was used as the research instrument for the study. The study tested the two null hypotheses and found out that, indeed, there was a significant relationship between youths perception of Nigeria’s image and the nature of stories disseminated by foreign television stations on the Nigerian society. The second null hypotheses also concluded that there was a significant relationship between the selected youths’ perception of Nigeria’s image and the predominance tone of the foreign television stations’ content on the Nigerian society.
Conclusion
The study investigated youths perception of Nigeria’s image representation by foreign television stations. Based on the results of the interpreted statistical analysis, it can be concluded that the nature of news stories disseminated by foreign television stations about Nigeria was negative and this was observed to be related to negative perception of the country among Nigerian youths. Also, the foreign media’s programme contents were observed to have implications on the Nigerian youths’ perception or image of their country. Predominantly, foreign television stations’ predominantly represented Nigeria in negative light, which was considered by majority of the Nigerian youths to be true of the country. Nigerian youths perceived their country’s image representation through incessant viewing of foreign television programmes as established among undergraduates in selected universities in Nigeria. The implication of foreign television stations’ representation of the Nigerian society was evident in youths’ negative perception of the country. Such perception includes hopelessness, unpatriotism, gangsterism, cultism, terrorism, cybercrime, armed robbery, militancy, kidnapping and other cultural vices.
Foreign television stations contents tend to influence how Nigerian youths as represented by selected university undergraduates in Nigeria perceived their country’s image. The contents also influenced the way they see their country’s internal events. The study established that the longer the Nigerian youths are exposed to foreign television contents, the more they adopt those foreign television contents that influence their perception about their country.
Given equal chance, most of the Nigerian youths preferred foreign television programmes to Nigerian local contents because of perceived better quality through advanced technology of the former compared to the latter. They also preferred foreign television contents because of the programmes associated with their country. Hence,there is significance effects of the foreign television stations’ contents on Nigerian youths because majority of them appeared to see everything western in a positive light.The preference of Western media contents by the Nigerian youths seems to spell doom to the socio-cultural cum economic values of Nigerian society. The study established that most times, the implications of these are violence , gangsterism, cultism, terrorism, militancy, rape, kidnapping, juvenile delinquency,, weird dressing, drug addiction, sexual perversion, armed robbery and other unpatriotic activities that constituted major threat to the national development.
Recommendations
Based on the findings and observations from the field, the study hereby offers the following specific recommendations.
- Foreign television stations should engage in investigative reporting to be able to truthfully and adequately cover Nigerian stories in the right perspective.
- Local broadcasting stations should increase hours of transmitting indigenous programmes that are capable of transforming Nigerian youths culturally, thus maintaining the 70-30 per cent of local/foreign programme contents as stipulated by the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC).
- The Nigerian government should make it a point of communication policy to censor news flow into the country for the purpose of checking negative portrayal of the countries issues and events.
- It is important for the Nigerian youths to be specially orientated about the reality of the Nigerian situation. This is to serve as a counter campaign to the distorted representation of Nigeria by foreign television stations. To achieve this, stakeholders such as parents, guardians and teachers should guide youths’ exposure to foreign media contents and inculcate values of patriotism into the youths so that they can believe in the country.
- Media policy makers and practitioners have a role to play in addressing the imbalance in the global information flow, which is detrimental to Nigeria’s image. They should therefore engage in independent and unsponsored campaigns that would shape the perception of youths about the country. This can be considered a social responsibility effort of the media.
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