Communication Vices that Engender Development: Oxymoronic Relevance of Social Media Use in Nigeria

Abstract

The Nigerian journalist has lost his monopoly of information gathering, dissemination and control with the involvement of citizens in ‘journalism’ through social media especially Whatsapp. The objective of this paper is to show how through social media, with emphasis on Whatsapp, Nigerian citizens have been able to find their voices and can now contribute to societal well-being and development by embarking on information gathering and reporting. It uses participant-observation method to interrogate how citizen journalism has engendered development via negative journalism practice. The findings indicate that the government and other relevant stakeholders in the society respond to the voices of the people on issues which ordinarily would have been muted by conventional journalism practice or ignored by government. It concludes that citizen journalism through unconscious and unprofessional practice engenders development by somehow making government accountable through its response to issues of concern in areas that would otherwise, have been muted. Keywords: social media, citizen journalism, development, communication vices, Whatspp, Nigeria