Journalism: A Study In The New Media

INTRODUCTION

Information and Communications Technology (ICT) is taking the world by storm, it is nevertheless, an increasingly powerful tool for participating in global markets; promoting political accountability; improving the delivery of basic services; and enhancing local development opportunities. The Information and Communication Technologies Task Force monitored by UNDP, through its core activities, working groups and regional nodes, has successfully contributed to advancing the multi-stakeholder discussion on Internet governance, enabling environment and other high-profile policy issues; added to progress in measuring, monitoring and analysing the impact of information and communications technologies (ICT) on the achievement of the internationally agreed development goals; further supported and promoted collaborative initiatives at the regional, subregional and national levels and provided significant input to the formulation of a comprehensive United Nations information and communications technologies strategy. It is also contributing towards making the Tunis phase of the World Summit on the Information Society a success.

To these development scholars, adoption of ICT means development for African communities without mindful of the fact that this incursion is highly capable of eroding our basic tenets and traditional values, one of which is the conventional media.

At the threshold of this fairly new millennium (2000 A.D.), there was a sporadic turn-around in the existing branches of the global media. This catapulted the world into a new information order that forcefully attempted to erode the traditional media. This turn-around made the traditional media's dictators and gatekeepers to loose their hold. The sub - editors, and editors who control what comes into the news, and by implication, what the people are being exposed to, could no longer reserve the right. This is because the coming of the new media has brought with it another means of exposing people to media information without necessary passing such information through the control of the editors; thereby creating a world in which men could access the material of his choice, when he wanted it, and no longer at the mercy of the gatekeepers.

Through the Internet - induced worldwide web (www), media information are provided in total detail. The Internet has provided a large amount of news items that people can have access to freely.

These ICT-induced forces that tend to erode the existing media vis-Ðo-vis; the print and the broadcast is the concern of this paper. The paper sees the adoption of ICT in journalism as a plot to overtake the traditional media and seeks to point out the fact that this latest communication trend is a threat to the conventional media. Specifically, the paper elucidates on the ICT-induced new media as an agent of erosion of the conventional media. The paper is structured into the following subheads for easy understanding:

 Introduction

 Contextual definition of key concepts to wit;

 ICT-induced New media

 Traditional media

 Theoretical perspectives

 Unprecedented adoption of the new media; a threat to the conventional media

 Is new media the end of the conventional media

 Conclusion and Recommendation

CONTEXTUAL DEFINITION OF KEY CONCEPTS

NEW MEDIA

New media is the general term given to the constantly changing way in which entertainment and information is being delivered to consumers. In many ways, it is a moving target but, at present, it encompasses the internet, WAP phones, digital television and set top boxes, as opposed to our traditional means of communicating like newspapers, analogue television, books and analogue radio (sometimes known as the old media). In recent years, the emergence of e-mail and the Internet in the home as well as at work means that new media has come to play an ever- increasing part in our lives. One of the more respected practitioners in the business has described it as everything that isn't old media. It includes the digital developments and interactive television. Anywhere the user has control over the content and it is delivered in digital format. Hollingsworth 2003: 35. For the purpose of this paper, traditional media and conventional media will be used interchangeably to mean the same thing.

TRADITIONAL MEDIA

This includes the media that ushered in the communication process in the world over. In some quarters, it is being referred to as the old media because it is as old as man. It is equally called the traditional media because it has become the tradition among the people and their way of life. Radio, television and newspaper are notable examples of the traditional media.

THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVE

To best understand the thematic preoccupation of this work, the concept of critical mass theory as it applies to the adoption of a new communication technology is desirable and would be used. The term comes from physics, where critical mass refers to the minimum amount of material needed to trigger and sustain a radioactive chain reaction. The term has been loosely applied to communication and refers to the minimum number of people needed as adopters before a new communication technology can have a permanent place in the society Kaye and Medoff, 2001.

Williams, Strover and Grant (1994) corroborate

An interesting aspect of the critical mass perspective is that widespread use appears to have a snowball effect. Once a perceived critical mass is using the technology, those without it are strongly motivated to adopt it. The reasoning here is that despite the drawbacks, such as cost or difficulty in using the technology, people (and institutions) are pressured to adopt the technology because failure to do so may exclude them from existing communication networks.

Markus (1987), while making a case for the adoption of interactive communication technologies, suggested three propositions in the adoption process as cited in Kaye and Medoff (2001). First, the adoption and use of technology is an all-or-nothing proposition. When sufficient number of adopters exist in the community, eventually all members will adopt the technology. The best example of this is the telephone, which