The Importance of Television in Democracy: A Cue for Nigeria
By
Muhammad Jameel Yusha'u
(Ex year student)
Department of Mass communications Bayero University P.M.B. 3011 Kano
The twentieth century has seen a transformation in the nature of communication. Much of it now is mediated through electronic technology, bought and sold in a market system, and produced in institutions marked by a complex division of labour (Curran; 2000:19). Researchers begin inquiring into the effects of television almost as soon as these strange and marvelous new devices started to appear in living rooms across the land in the late 1950s.
Researchers in mass communications were interested in knowing how specific messages, channels and sources could produce changes in attitudes or behaviours. This was the natural outgrowth of the way mass communication research had developed from the 1920s, fuelled by public fear of power of the media, along with anxious politicians, eager advertisers, crusading social engineers, and others itching to see the massive reach of the media to get "their message across" quickly and efficiently. Government, military and corporate funding sources played an important role in the decision of those working within the field to take this direction. The goal was to determine what kinds of persuasive messages could be used most effectively in campaigns of various kinds -political, advertising, public, health, educational, military and so on (Shanahan & Morgan; 1999:10).
In excess of 750 million TV sets in more than 160 countries are watched by 2.5 billion people per day(Kellner:1990:1). Given television's penetration into every day life, the controversy surrounding it is not surprising. The controversy intensifies in the light of debates over its social and political functions. There are of course voracious readers, movie fanatics, web surfers, magazine devotees and those who never turn off the radio. But for many people television dominates the media diet. For almost every one, television viewing begins before we develop the tastes and selective patterns of consumption that we apply to other media, usage patterns for other media are informed by the fact of being born into households where television is virtually a member of the family.
Unlike the print media, television does not require literacy. Unlike theatrical movies, television runs almost continuously and can be watched without leaving one's own home and without payment on a programme basis. Unlike radio, television can show as well as tell. Unlike Internet, television does not require computer skills. Most of all Gabner and Gross argued that television is different from other media in its centralised mass-production and ritualistic use of a coherent set of images and messages produced to appeal to virtually the entire population (Shanahan &Morgan;1999:21)
Despite the growth of new technologies and explosion of channels since 1920s, television remains the dominant purveyor of stories and messages shared across lines of, class, gender, race, age, religion, geography, ethnicity and so on. Television increasingly operates not only in a national, politically bounded space, but within the economic structures of global market place (Stokes & Readings; 1999:248)
Recent changes to the technologies of television, and in particular the emergence satellite and cable mode of transmission, have already begun to fragment television audiences and transform the relationship between television and the nation. The capacity of cable and satellite signals to cross national boundaries has redrawn the lines of television and the ways it imagines and addresses the audience (1bid: 248).
Therefore the utilisation of the television in democracy is very crucial, because democracy required vital and well-informed public, eager to participate in debates and struggles concerning political issues of common interest.
Television can serve as a check on excessive state power, but it also provides government with an incredibly powerful instrument of governance and social control. Television provides the President with the power to address millions of people whenever he or he wishes (Kellner; 1990:105). Television mobilises images, forms, styles and ideas to present ideological positions. It draws on the process of social experience, uses familiar generic codes and forms, and employs rhetorical and persuasive devices to attempt to induce consent to certain positions and practices. Yet this process of ideological production and transmission is not one-dimensional process of indoctrination, but rather, is an active process of negotiation that can be resisted or transformed by audiences according to their own ends and interest(ibid:18-19).
It should be understood that Its through excessive utilisation of the television that 3rd world countries and Nigeria in particular were deceived into western model of democratic governance which is detrimental to them and resulted in cultural imperialism and the exportation of American television. having realised this danger, developing countries fought in the nations and elsewhere for a "new world information order "that would permit them to control the information and entertainment flowing in their courtiers. The United States ,however fought for "freedom of information" encouraging and supporting commercial television enterprises throughout the world that would be open to US programming and advertising.
During the 1980s,U.S domination of the world television market dramatically increased, In 1984 US programmes accounted for 75 percent of the $400 million international market place. By the end of the decade, US television programme distribution were taking in more than $1.3 billion from programme sales; and by 1992 US distributors were taking more than $3.6 billion with $2.7 billion coming from western Europe. There was also increased investments by the US networks in foreign television systems and the beginning of foreign co-productions (Kellner; 1990:81-82).
The television in Nigeria whether in the federal, State or those privately owned should try and explore the interest of the public. This version of the public interest requires equal access to education, information and the media of public debate. Instead of presenting programmes that are more favourable to the government, more avenues should be created for the public to air their views on how they are governed. In this regard a high degree of responsibility is required, where both the ruling and the ruled will