The Attitude of Female Mass Communication Students Towards Journalism as a Career (a Study of Nnamdi Azikwe University Awka)
CHAPTER ONE
OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
Because of the way the image of women in our society are been portrayed when it comes to them practicing journalism as their profession, the study is therefore aimed at finding out the attitudes of female mass communication students towards journalism as a career.
This study therefore tends to look into the image of women in the media and more also find out why there has been is imbalance in the ratio of working male and female journalist.
This research work will also help to reveal why there is sharp contrast from the number of female journalists that graduate from journalism schools and the number in the field.
Finally, this research work helps to give suggestion based on findings.
CHAPTER TWO
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
Generally, the purpose of a review is to analyze critically a segment b a published body of knowledge through summary. Classification and comparison of prior research studies, reviews of literature and theoretical articles.
In the research context, literature means a collection of printed material provided in the form of books journals, magazines, newspapers, documents, abstract, proposals, reports etc. dealing with specific object. According to Ogili (2005:42) says:
The review of literature involves building your research project on specific foundations of earlier studies in a given area of interest. Literature here simply means reference to earlier and relevant materials to the chosen research project topic or problem, literature makes use of primary and secondary sources.
Therefore, literature review concerns with the exhaustive survey of what has been done or known on a given identified problem. It helps the researcher to discover the extent of work other studies done already in the problem area.
SOURCES OF LITERATURE
In order to make this research work in academic work and successful one, the researcher has deemed it necessary to make use of journals, newspapers, unpublished materials, textbooks, articles and internet materials as the sources of her literature for this study. Also, questionnaires were distributed as a primary source to gather data from her respondents.
REVIEW OF RELEVANT LITERATURES
In this area, it is assumed that earlier that similar studies have been carried out on this particular research topic: for this reason, review shall be done in subheadings according to the research questions such that the main variable must be addressed. This will also help to broaden our knowledge on the issue at hand.
FEMALE ATTIDTUDE TOWARDS JOURNALISM
There may be saying that the female mass communication students have negative attitude towards practicising journalism as their career. There is also every reason to believe that the Nigeria women have made a significant entry into journalism profession.
In our Nigeria today, if the female mass communication students are having attitude towards journalism as their career, they are not to be blamed in Nigeria, culture and religion have helped in making women silent thereby relegating them to the background and also deny them of their rights and privileges they should enjoy as journalists and member of the society.
CHAPTER THREE
METHODOLOGY
RESEARCH DESIGN
Survey method is the research design adopted by the researcher. Survey, according to Nwodu (2006:67) is a research method, which focuses on a representative sample derived from the entire population of study”. The researcher who employs this method therefore, goes into the field and selects samples out of the entire population. It has to do with administering questionnaires personally to gather data, and collecting them back from the various respondents in other to analyze the data for a better result.
AREA OF THE STUDY
The researcher’s area of study will be Nnamdi Azikiwe University Awka. This is because the topic is A study of the attitude of female mass communication students towards journalism as a career”, it therefore means that the above stated area is appropriate for the study.
POPULATION OF THE STUDY
Population of the study according to Ogili (2005:53) involves a group of persons or aggregate items, things the researcher is interested in getting information from for the study”.
Therefore, the population that will be used for this study will be the female mass communication students of Nnamdi Azikiwe University Awka which comprises 2013 students. This figure was given to the researcher by the management of the school.
The researcher chose this population because the population will make it easier for the researcher to extract the research sample from it.
CHAPTER FOUR
PRESENTATION AND ANALYSIS OF DATA
DATA PRESENTATION AND ANALYSIS
Data analysis is an explanation of factual information generated in the course of a study” Nwodu (2006:172). Also, Ikeagu (1998:220) said that data can be analyzed to further the overall goal of understanding social phenomena achieved through the process of description explanation and prediction”.
During the course of the field survey, the researcher administered one hundred and fifty copies of questionnaires and was able to collect all.
CHAPTER FIVE
SUMMARY
The researcher in this work have exhausted efforts in the systematic arrangement of the work in sequential order. The preceding chapter of this work have among other things tried to summarily review, discuss and interpret the attitude of female mass communication students towards journalism as a career.
In chapter one, the researcher have a detailed introductory overview on how the female journalists neglect the practice of their profession after studying it in the polytechnics/universities thereby creating an imbalance in the number of female and male trained journalists working in the field, as it is seen that the number of female journalists who graduates each year from the Nigeria institutions are greater than the number of the male journalists graduates.
The chapter two of this work projected the literature that were used in building up this research work, how they were reviewed ranging from the female journalists attitude towards journalism as a career, discrimination against women journalists, reasons why female journalists shy away from their duties and impressions about female journalists. All these were reviewed to know more about the reason behind the negative attitude of female mass communication students towards journalism as their career.
Chapter three on its side treated the issue of research methodology ranging from research design, area of study, population and samples of the study which was realized using the simple random sampling technique. The researchers method of investigation was based on the copies of questionnaires that were distributed to the selected respondents
In chapter four, data presentation was done through analytical processing that followed each table and the tables were properly interpreted according to the data computed there in the chi-square goodness of fit test was adopted as a means for testing the hypothesis formula in the research work. The chapter therefore contains 15 tables in all which gave a detailed and quantified explanations of data gathered in the course of this study.
In chapter five, the researcher give a brief summary of the whole done in this research work, the findings, conclusion and recommendations. To this end, Nwodu (2006) states “summary should be a brief of all that was done in the study, a tie up of what was done in study”. This very chapter finally brought the entire study to an end while making some explanations and giving recommendations on the way forward.
CONCLUSION
Based on the findings, it has been observed that most of the female mass communication students would want to practice journalism on graduation. Yet majority of them still believe that teaching is the most suitable job for women because it offers more time for family activities. This means that certain perceived difficulties like discriminations which female journalist face could be redressed or entangled if they choose teaching as their career.
From the analysis gathered in this project also, there is no doubt to believe that female mass communication students have negative attitude towards journalism as their career. Also, the necessary findings of this study as seen in the five hypothesis tested, all received statistical support.
Again, the findings of this study shows that Nigerian culture, the society, and our different religions and beliefs have contributed so much in the negative attitudes of female journalist towards journalism. The position of women in the society and our different cultures as mothers and wives also make men discriminate against female journalist as the concept of a woman practicing journalists or making a choice to practice journalism was considered rebellious and unfeminine. All these and many other reviews are pointing at the society, traditions, culture and our different religious as the major contributions to the negative attitude of female journalist towards journalism as a career.
Despite the negative attitudes female journalist towards journalism as a career, the researcher was able to discover that in as much as the female journalists have negative attitude towards journalism, they can still do much better in the field if not better than their male counterparts. But this can only happen if they are given the opportunity to practice what they have studied without being discriminated against supporting this, fedler et al (2005) says that female journalist should be proud of themselves whenever they find themselves as they cannot be defeated by their male counterparts or other female who read other professions.
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FURTHER STUDY
Having critically analyzed the attitude of mass communication female towards journalism as a career, the researcher hereby make the following recommendations for further study thus:
- Media house should make it as a point of duty to employ more of female journalist just like they employ the male journalist.
- Our families, religious, culture and the society should stop the discrimination against female or women. This will help the society to see the female journalist as important as their male counterparts when this is done, the female journalist will be encouraged to go into the field and face the challenges of the world with their male counterparts.
- Those media house that have employed women should not employ them as presenters but also assign them to the field as reporters so that they will see and feel the fun of journalism. When this is done their negative attitude will automatically change to proactive and this will encourage more female journalists to seek for employment in the media houses as reporters and freelancers.
- Men who are opportune to marry female journalist should encourage them to practice their profession as this will broaden their horizon and also help the family to be current on things happening in the world.
- Salaries of working journalist should be increased so as to motivate and change the negative attitude of female mass communication students towards journalism as a career to positive one.
- Working female journalist should be seen as being equally faithful as their counterparts in other field and not as promiscuous as people seen them.
- Other working conditions such as good housing.
REFERENCES
- Akinfeleye R. A.(1996) journalism education and training in Nigeria (203-205) Lagos: Nigeria press council.
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- Beverly, A.S.(1995). Building gender fairness in schoold. USA southern Illinios: University press.
- Bojuwoye, J (1987). Gender, identity status and career maturity of adolescent. Retrieved December 7, 2009, from http://www.krepublishers.com/02-journals/j.
- Cambridge Advanced learner’s Dictionary (2nd Ed) UK: Cambridge University press.
- Chambers 211st century Dictionary. (3rd Ed) (2005) New Delhi: Allied publishers.
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- Fedlr F. et al (2006). Reporting for the media (8th ed) New York: Oxford University press.
