A professor of Comparative Media Studies of the Department of Mass Communication, KolaDaisi University, Ibadan Nigeria, Professor Jendele Hungbo has observed the need to fashion out media literacy programme that will expose more citizens to a critical understanding of the ways in which media deployment creates images or semblances of individual and situations that are at variance with reality.
While stating that these deployments are tailored towards specific objectives, he said media messages are therefore more like metaphors which require proper and consistent literacy for decoding.
Professor Hungbo made these observations on Wednesday, Nov 6, while delivering the maiden inaugural lecture of the university on behalf of the Faculty of Arts, management and Social Sciences at the Sherifat Agbeke Hall of the institution.
The theme of the lecture which was part of the activities lined up for the fourth Convocation ceremony of the institution was ‘Metaphors of the Self: New Epistemological Landscapes in Africa Media.’
The don who regaled the audience with auto-ethnographic reflections of his career in the past three decades, noted that the media in Nigeria and in most part of the African continent have been pilloried most of the time by the same individuals and groups who deployed them for individual and group benefits in the course of seeking advantage, merited or otherwise.
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According to him, “the framing of the self and contestations among different identities has therefore continued to be a major preoccupation of the media in Africa, yet, this is an aspect of the essence of the media, where there had been little scholarly attention among media studies experts especially in Nigeria.’’
He, therefore, submitted that the mass media literacy he is proposing has to be undertaken on a massive scale for the problems bedeviling the media landscape to subside.
“Such a literacy programme must be technology driven and requires relevant infrastructure.
“The learner in Hillbrow if he must be ahead of the pupil in Ajegunle or Oja Oba must be overly advantaged such that when they reach the information superhighway that now levels them all one becomes a laggard and the other a flyer, he stressed.
The media guru therefore posited that literacy is the responsibility of all stakeholders whose agency must combine to fight all forms of misuse and misinterpretation troubling the media landscape.
“That is the way the ever growing and mutating media can serve us all better in Africa,” he said.
