FOREIGN TELEVISION STATIONS’ REPRESENTATION AND THE PERCEPTION OF NIGERIA’S IMAGE BY YOUTHS IN SELECTED UNIVERSITIES IN SOUTHWEST NIGERIA

ABSTRACT

Nigeria youths are perhaps vulnerable victims of foreign television programmes transmitted to Nigeria. The manner in which the foreign television stations represent the image of the Nigerian society appears imbalanced. This could impact on the perception of the country’s image among theyouths. The perception could lead to anti-social behaviour among Nigerian youths.The study examined the influence of foreign television stations’ representation of Nigeria’s image on the perception of Nigeria’s image by youths in selected universities in South-West, Nigeria.

The study adopted survey research design. The population comprised 37,650 undergraduates of three selected universities in South-West, Nigeria.  Multistage sampling technique was employed in the selection process. Simple random sampling was used to select three states (Oyo, Ogun,Osun) and three universities, one from each of the selected states in Southwest, Nigeria. A total of 15 schools/faculties were randomly selected from the universities. The sample size of 1,500 undergraduates were randomly selected. A validated questionnaire complemented by a Focus Group Discussion guide were used for data collection. The Cronbach’s Alpha reliability co-efficient for the constructs in the questionnaire ranged between 0.872 and 0.974. The response rate was 94.1%. Data from the questionnaire were analysed,using Pearson Product Moment Correlation. Data from the focus group discussions were content-analysed.

Findings revealed that there was a strong positive significant relationship between youths’ perception of Nigeria’s image representation and the nature of news stories disseminated by foreign television stations on Nigerian society (r=-0.711, p<0.05). There wasa strong positive significant relationship between the selected youths perception of Nigeria’s image representation and the predominant tone of foreign television stations’ contents on the Nigerian society(r= -0.778, p<0.05). Findings from the focus group discussions revealed that Nigerian youths perceived their country’s image the way foreign television stations represented the country as a terror, poor, backward and corrupt society.

The study concluded that the type of news and the predominant tone of foreign television stations’ programme contents formed the basis for the perception of the image of Nigeria by the youths in the selected universities. The study recommended that foreign television stations should engage in investigative reporting to be able to truthfully and adequately cover Nigerian stories in the right perspective. Parents, guardians and teachers should inculcate values of patriotism  into the youths so that they can believe in their country.

Keywords:      Foreign television, Image representation, Nigerian youths, Predominant tone,Perception

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1       Background to the Study

From the beginning, communication has been an integral part of the human society. It has taken many forms from the ancient cave painting to mobile internet of the 21^st century, facilitating contacts between different cultures through travel and trade as well as war and colonialism.  Such interactions have resulted in transporting and implanting ideas, religious beliefs, languages, economic and political systems from one part of the world to another by a variety of means that have evolved over millennia: oral and written language, sound and images (Schramm, 1988). As the society developed from the traditional through modern to the post-modern eras, communication developed to cater for human needs at individual, group and societal levels. The advent and popularity of mass communication have broken communication borers between societies and countries with the mass media transforming the human society and their effects felt across the world. Thus, media interest has grown beyond the conventional practice to international standard resulting in media globalization. (Alao, Alao & Oguchi , 2012).

Countries and cultures have long been in communication across borders. In the 20^th century, radio, television and later, the internet accelerated this process.  Broadcast television took pre-eminence from the late 1940s (Schiller, 1969). Television is a domestic medium through which every household has access to an increasing flow of information and entertainment, using devices of sophisticated sources of images and information (Miles, 1988). Television became an attractive medium such that between 1980s and 1990s, the average daily period of viewing varied between 4.9 and 5.3 hours per household and between 3.0 and 3.8 hours for each individual (Sharot, 1994). Indeed, it is clear that television is central to the processes of media saturation in the modern society. Television is an important mass medium in all advanced industrialised countries and it is rapidly becoming so in the developing world. Allen (1992) carried out a study on television and observed that what people did with television was a topic worth considering in research because television’s roles in everyday lives of people manifest in so many different ways. He asserts that “today around the world, 3.5 billion hours will be devoted to watching television” (p. 110). This

implies that television reaches a very large number of people, and it is perhaps the most important source of common experience for countries of the world that are divided by class, ethnicity, gender, religion, culture, political system, level of advancement and other factors.

        As a result of the influence of television at individual, group and societal levels, discourse about television programmes among Nigerian youths is a routine and important aspect of their everyday social interactions. At work, in the home, in the street, in the bus or on campus, Nigerian youths talk about the characters in soap opera, share latest fashion styles and discuss burning issues raised in both international and local news broadcasts and documentaries. What they discuss during such interactions is determined by the contents of the media to which they are exposed, especially television being an attractive medium that reaches its audience with an audio-visual appeal.