Journalism Practice and New Media: An Exploratory Analysis of Journalism Culture and Practice in Nigeria

Abstract

For many years, Western media theories and journalism practices have been the hallmark of the journalism profession in Africa. However, the globalised nature of our world which has become interconnected and interdependent, spawned by increasing technological changes, underlines the importance of analysing journalism practices and new media in Nigeria from a global perspective. Theories of the present global media ecology have therefore, become unsustainable and unsatisfactory (Cottle, Global Crisis Reporting: Journalism in the Global Age, Open University Press, Maidenhead, 2009). Globalisation opens up the opportunity to study journalism practice and culture as a hybrid (McMillin, International Media Studies, Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, 2007), hence the need for a definition of journalism that can reflect and accommodate the global political differences and culture (Wasserman and de Beer, The Handbook of Journalism Studies, Routledge, New York, 2009).