The world today is continuously becoming a community. Communication research offers you a window into the secrets of how this phenomenon is happening.
Mass communication as a discipline is not just about mass people or mere communication, it’s about connectivity, sociality and humanity from grassroots to the unfathomable space.
As a result of technological development, the most recent happenings around the globe are being dessiminated as they unfold, while the public easily accesses such information through the use of various social platforms.
In contemporary journalism practice, the way and manner in which information is being passed is very fast to the extent that the professional editorial principles and ethics are simply jettisoned.
Consequently, journalists nowadays are not strictly adhering to the professionual ethics guiding the noble practice.
The social media provides ample opportunity for equitable dissemination of information which comprises the various multimedia or audio visual contents.
The multi-media and interactivity feature of social media make the information dessiminated more appealing and interesting.
The social media also paves ways for some media to publish unguarded and uncensored comments, which usually end up causing more harm than good to the society.
The digital media presenting the live video footages at the scene of the events or happenings around the world explains better on how some certain incidents really occurred. Fortunately, this affects the ugly practice of framing information to achieve certain results.
Therefore, journalists should not take the advantage of easy accessibility to social media to feed the public with unreliable information that will unarguably end up misleading the public. They should instead inculcate values and behaviours to the larger audience.
The media, which tends to dessiminate massages widely and rapidly in large and diverse audiences in an attempt to influence them in a variety of ways, are already losing their professional integrity. Consequently, there is a rigorous censorship pervading the journalism practice.
Mubarak Shuaybu Shelleng,
200 Level Mass Communication,
University of Maiduguri