The Mass Media in the mission of cultural promotion: the

African Identity question, by NWOSU RAPHAEL ccE.

MASS MEDIA AND REALITY

One of the obvious truths that are told currently is that the mass media has witnessed a
tremendous advancement especially in this 21st century. With the aid of the techno-scientific
aided globalised networking, there results an indescribable rate of cross fertilization of ideas and
ideologies through the exhibitions and disseminations of books and news papers around the
globe, the surging of TV local and international broadcasting stations, the banalisation of
Internet and mobile TVs. Magazine publishers promoted digital editions; and the popularity of e-
books appeared to be on the rise.
These usually gain high and significant influence in the social environment in affirming attitudes
and opinions of the people. The news media focus the public's attention on certain
personalities and issues, leading many people to form opinions about them. It
reinforces latent attitudes and “activates” them, prompting people to take
action. It can even mutilate people’s ways of life.
This is where loose cultures loose their boundaries; where liberal cultures are de-isolated.
Cultures unavoidably eat into themselves as people are able to gain assess to other people’s
cultures. Civilizations of higher economic communities dominate and lord themselves over lower
ones. There emerge a danger of submersion and annihilation of cultural elements of lower
communities and societies. People who are less economically influential are suppressed with
their cultures and have foreign cultures imposed directly or indirectly upon them.
One of the areas where this cultural neo-colonization manifests is the media. This work therefore
is a direct assessment of the media in its sensitive identity role in the West African context. How
does the African print and electronic media, promote the African cultures?

MASS MEDIA AND CULTURAL PROMOTION

The mass media plays another important role by letting individuals know what other people think
in their different domains of existence. By its very function, it represents each given culture in
the global village of multiple cultures. Beyond representation, it is capable of advertising and
sailing each culture beyond its shores. It really can enhance an envious opinion of a given culture
to encompass large number of individuals and wide geographic areas. The growth or
depreciation of a particular culture can heavily depend on the media. A country or a culture that
does not sale itself through the media in this 21st century is moving down to oblivion. The media
helps therefore in the promotion and acceptance of a particular culture by the diverse people who
have contact to it. It was because of the mass exposure of American and European cultures by
the series of their TV and Radio stations, the explosive spread of their (Fox and Hollywood)
Movie industrial entertainment Films and their cable news (American-CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC;
European BBC), and sports channels and because of their involvement of the internet in
advertising their cultures, that the naive African today tends to Americanism and Europeanism
than Africanism by imitating their intonation, dressing, food, music, dances, humor, costumes,
paintings, designs, architecture, etc. Therefore, how long and how rich, a particular culture stays
and develops depends on how serious and how important it is to the media. Hence, J.S., Leela
Joseph concludes that “whatever the media popularize is accepted by the people and becomes
part of their culture and life-style” (Media Education, Pauline Press, 2002)

MASS MEDIA IN AFRICA AND THE IDENTITY QUESTION

The very important point that confronts any serious minded social anthropologist who is
conversant with the electronic media programmes on the African Television and Radio stations
is that they have awoken from their inferiority-complex slumber. At the inception of some of the
African televisions like the Ghanaian Broadcasting corporation (GBC), Nigerian Television
Authority (NTA), and Radios like Radio Nigeria, etc., part of the very raison d’être of their
establishment is to restore the African-ness of the culturally robbed Africans who were
beginning to submit to the western life patterns. At this time, books were written by the elites
like My Oddesy of Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe of Nigeria, Consciencism, Philosophy and Ideology of
Kwameh Nkrumah of Ghana, Things Fall Apart of Chinua Achebe, Myth, Literature and the
African world of Wole Soyinka, My Africa of Mbonu Ojike and the pro-African ideologies of
pan-africanism of Julius Nyerere, Negritude of Leopold Sedar Seghor, and African
communalism (Ujamaah) of J. Nyerere again, were extolled and projected so that the culturally
alienated Africans could regain confidence in the African cultural values. This movement
seemed to be working as the television and radio stations exhibited certain pro-African
programmes and movies to burst confidence in the African man of the 1960s and 70s. In the
1980s and 90s, the search for greener pasture resulted to urbanization which exposed African
youths to western life-style. To worsen this situation, the explosion and spread of the American
and European action movies infiltrated the African system and reached a point where 60% of the
African children became favorites of these shows. The advent of the Nigerian Nollywood and
PMAN in the 20s added to the problem. Today, one wonders where we are going. Our home
movie industries are uncontrollably becoming more western than westerners thereby seducing
our youth off our cultural track and realities. The timely and numerical crimes committed by
most youths today, are learnt on-screens and carried out in western styles and strategies. The
unfathomable scandal of the television and radio broadcasters, who sometimes make a showbiz
of great and masterly possession of European and American tongue and fashions, is a betrayal of
our Fatherland. These do not mean that the local media of this age is not making effort. My
target is simply to call them from what they neglect back to order.

THE WAY AHEAD

The African culture defines the African man. Every aspect of the African man should therefore
reflect his/her Africanity. The function of the local media is therefore not to annihilate or confuse
but to promote the African culture; to fulfill the desire of the founding fathers towards achieving
the partially or totally lost identity of the African man through strange and foreign ideological
and cultural invaders. They must use every acceptable means to achieve this. They must be true
to their AFRICAN IDENTITY.