Media flows, domination and discourse in Nigeria

Abstract

Media development and the rise of communication studies in institutions of higher learning in Nigeria are directly related in two ways. If expanding media institutions and practice stimulated the need for further professional training at the university level, media output also provoked concern and intellectual curiosity that universities needed to respond to or engage with. Thus, intellectuals in communication studies in Nigerian universities trained and produced the personnel required to work in the growing media sector. At the same time they kept a curious eye and searchlight on the role of media in society that the present article is addressing. This article addresses domination as a key concern of Nigerian media scholars between the 1970s and 1990s. It addresses the theoretical and empirical bases of the debate at the time and raises issues with the conspiratorial silence among Nigerian intellectuals on the subject in the period since 1990. The article will argue, among other things, that while the silence is not haphazard it has coincided with developments in certain circles in western social theory that attempt to reject or obfuscate the notion of hegemony or domination in international media relations and its substitution with notions of indigenization and hybridization that appear to mask and conceal rather than illuminate hegemony inherent in the globalization project. The article will borrow from Gramsci’s notion of hegemony to explain previous and contemporary cultural flow of media content to Nigeria and within Nigeria. The article will conclude, among others, that the silence of Nigerian intellectuals on the domination debate is both acquiescence and a functional cause to imperialism in its various manifestations.