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The next phase of media reportage is not just the churning out of information. There’s a critical vacuum that has been created by “citizenship journalism”- people busting lies and doctored report with indepth media literacy and on-the-spot reporting skills.
They, like mostly unaware of salient ethics of information gathering and packaging finesse, creates problems for professional information custodians.
Rumours, grapevine, half-truths and outright ignorance can be used to send hyper-surging information to an information-seeking-generation that constantly seeks to be told what to think and how to think.
The proliferation of citizen-journalists who commercialise information at the tilt of income generation also poses a threat to information management. Liberalisation, either politically or economically introduces a rat-race for dividing the market of information consumption. Ethics resides in the bin. Sensationalism, image or character assassination becomes the bullet of trade. With a more temperate audience, controlled by technology and the media, consumption is anything that is generated.
Marshall McLuhan also projected the attendant challenges that the “global village” created from the networking of computers, bringing cross-fertilisation of information and urbanisation of homes sitting on the internet. Sufficiently, the media is always the “icing on the cake” for doing businesses, running governments and living life.
Media practitioners should be more interested in “perception” management- a situation where the mind is constantly supplied with the “real” information or the real “interpretation”.
21st century media boom, along with the liberalisation of information has made it difficult for professionals to stay relevant with just the skills of writing and sending. Measuring the impact of every written and spoken communication is a teke-meke of any media agent that aims to achieve expected feedback from a highly complex and stubborn audience-members who seek more information for themselves with growing media-literacy-skills.
In effect, the effects of media communication is more important than the “information” itself. To others, the source of information is more critical than the information itself( See, medium is the message theory).
Public office holders, business organisations and distinguished personalities ought to understand the dynamics of proper perception management. Like character, the decision of corporate and informal watchers( Audience members) is a psychological play between the mind- a dissonance and consonance warfare.
Image building and representation is no “boys” business especially in developing countries as credibility of information and personalities branded by the media is hugely dependent on sultry fences of “interests”. The divorce between “confidence” in the system and “information overload” is causing layers of different challenges for media practitioners who should be upping their games.
C. Promise Emmanuel
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