DEVELOPMENT CONTENT IN INDIGENOUS LANGUAGE RADIO

The proofs that messages are beller understood and that the audience derived good feeling of enjoyment and sense ofsatisfaction when they listen to radio messages in their indigenous language underscore the significance ofindigenous language radio in airing development-oriented messages. Against this backdrop, this paper examines the development content in an indigenous language radio station for example Radio Lagos 107. 5. Fll1 Nigeria. Findings showed that the radio station does not give adequate attention to development-oriented messages in terms of the number of such programmes aired weekly in comparison with non-development messages. However, the few development-oriented programmes were well- treated and were given good prominence

THE IMPLICATIONS OF INTERNET ON THE MEDIA AND THE PRACTICE OF MASS COMMUNICATION

Internet has emerged as a communication medium and its impact on society, commerce and the government is already phenomenal. As the nerve centre of the new media technologies, it has revolutionized the whole business of mass communication. This paper therefore examines the media convergence that the Internet has created and its revolution of the nature of mass communication. It also explores the various dimensions by which the digital revolution has affected all aspects ofmediaprofession, fromproduction, distribution, storage and use of media content, to the practice of media profession

CHILD RIGHTS AND MEDIA DEMOCRATIZATION: AN AGENDA FOR REALIZATION OF THE MDGs IN NIGERIA

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are eight goals to be achieved by 2015. The Goals have become an international framework for development and a platform for developing countries and their partners to work together. UNICEF has called attention to the fact that meeting the MDGs requires paying serious attention to the rights of children. Its position is that "six of the eight millennium development goals can best be met as the rights of children to health, education, protection and equality" and that "they will only be sustained as the rights of every child are realized". However, the current situation of children is far from the ideal, especially with the developing nations, Nigeria inclusive. There is therefore the need for urgent actions to protect the rights of the child in order to meet the Millennium Goals. A critical step in this direction is the engagement of the media. The media play a key role in encouraging people's participation in the realization of the goals, especially where it has to do with holding the government accountable jar the Millennium promise. This paper argues that the current Nigerian media system is not in a position to satisfy the media needs for realizing the MDGs. It therefore calls for a more vibrant media structure and practice that will ensure information democratization in order to popularize child rights and consequently aid the fulfillment of MDGs

Information Sources and Awareness Level of Child Rights in Lagos State, Nigeria

The United Nations' Convention on the Rights of the Child prescribes certain rights that children are entitled to enjoy placing the responsibility of ensuring these rights on parents, guidance, government among others. Article 42 of the Convention prescribes that the pi-ovisions of the Convention should be widely known even to children themselves since the value of the information given by children will increase as it becomes clear to them that ·what they think, feel, experience is valuable and important. This study examined the extent to which secondary school students in Lagos state are aware of their rights and explored their views about the exercise of these rights. Through survey method, information was obtained from 500 respondents. The findings show that the respondents professed to know about the rights of the children but many ofthem (76.2%) have never heard of the United Nations CRC. Television is the most patronized source of infonnation for the respondents from which they have received most of their information on the child rights. They also believe that they have rights and that it is the government's responsibility to make provision for meeting some of their needs like education and health. It is recommended that child rights advocates should increase their efforts in putting the rights of the child in the public space and give information on how children can demand for the fulfillment of these rights

Media Ownership and the Coverage of Child Rights in the Nigerian Newspapers

A!ass media ownership and its effects on different aspects of mass media performance has been the subject of many studies. This topic attracts many scholars due to the importance of mass media in social life of society and their ability to·affect people: Mass media contribute to building strong nations, and create feelings of unity by transmitting values and norms in messages. Afass media play the role of an agent of the secondary socialization process and can contribute to successful socialisation of individuals into existing social life. It is against this important role of the media that this study examined how the coverage of child rights is influenced by the ownership of media organisations. This article, through content analysis, examined two national newspapers of different ownership structure, government-owned and privately-owened. The findings show some differences in the pattern of coverage. adopted by the two newspapers. Besides, while coverage of child rights by the newspapers was generally low, it was observed that the government-owned newspaper.did a little better in handling some areas of the reportage than the privately-owned newspaper

DYNAMICS OF INDIGENOUS LANGUAGE IN ENVIRONMENTAL COMMUNICATION

The seriousness of environmental issue has been brought to the fore, not only because of its significance to human sustainability but also due to its degeneration to communal conflicts, as well as emergence of miscreants and hoodlums who find expression of their destructive tendencies in environmental problems. This paper calls for a reappraisal of method of communicating environmental messages in particular reference to the language of communication. It begins with identification of environmental problems, the goal that environmental communication is meant to achieve and the inappropriateness of the English language packaged messages to achieving the goals. It stresses the significance of indigenous language use in communicating environmental massages and rounds off with examples of indigenous language communication