Journal of Mass Communication & Journalism

According to the media council of Kenya, 95% of all Kenyans listen regularly to the radio. As much as some people dismiss the radio for not being as rich as the TV which exploits both the visual and audio senses, it is a fact that nobody can dismiss the “strong influence” (Lasswell theory) of the radio on the general population. The radio is an effective tool of communication due to its portability, affordability and ability to reach a large audience, even to the poorest population in the remotest part of the world with little infrastructure. One can listen to it while going on with their daily chores. Kenya has over a hundred radio stations today a good number of them being commercial stations while the others are community Radios. Some of these commercial stations broadcast in vernacular therefore causing confusion as to what exactly is the difference between a community radio and the commercial radio broadcasting in a local language. This paper attempts at elucidating vividly the difference between the two and the role they play in the society with a bias to the Kenyan context of legal and policy frame work .

The deregulation of the broadcast industry in Africa has helped politicians to advance their ambitions at the expense of the ethics of the profession of journalism. In Nigeria, there are prevalent cases of the state media being used by government to run political campaigns of only the political parties of the ruling class. This is the same story where private media organizations are owned by chieftains of some political parties in the country. Such media (both print and electronic) are used as propaganda machineries by these party chieftains and also used as media for carrying out negative reports about the party in power. Many African countries have similar situations. This paper looks at how the ownership of media organizations across the continent has interfered with the standards of professionalism in journalism. The paper will use the social responsibility theory and the libertarian theory to serve as theoretical framework. The paper will dwell more on the role of ownership in the media coverage of some African countries from 2011 to 2012 and try to make comparison with what is obtainable in the United Kingdom and the United States of America.

Rural development is need of the hour for a conflict torn state like Jammu and Kashmir, which is on the threshold of being among the most developed states of India, despite the conflict of more than two decades. The quest for rural development must lead in the direction of empowering those societies who are in the need of being empowered. The rural Kashmir has witnessed blood-shed, rapes, molestation, harassment for decades, but issues remained suppressed due to immature media. No society can think of development, when its people are being killed, harassed and undergo inhuman treatment. To understand what role media can play in rural development, we have to understand media scenario in Jammu and Kashmir. This paper endeavors to present bit of the media reach and working in Jammu and Kashmir, especially rural areas.

The way stories are told to the public in any society, even the most draconian ones, always leaves some room for trivia non grata to beholders in the ruling authorities. Seditious messages passing for praises do find their way into public discourse to rub power holders the wrong way. Since symbolic representation of reality makes it impossible for any text to be seamlessly closed, linguistic cracks and loopholes open up endless possibilities for the imaginative writer with a hidden political agenda in authoritarian societies.

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate how corporate communication has changed in the new digital era especially in crisis communication. The thrust of the thesis is that social media must be taken into account and its benefits harnessed maximumly in mitigating and lessening a crisis. It also examines real cases of how social media has been applied either positively or negatively to aid crisis resolution or excarbate it. It cites strengths and challenges of this mode of communication and warns companies on pitfalls associated with social media. The recommendation is that instead of shunning it we must embrace and learn how to co-exist and benefit from it.

New idioms and idiomatic expressions, which are modern stock expressions, constitute communicative clogs in Yoruba routine discourses because of their semantic complexity and deviant nature. Existing studies have established their scope of usage in Yoruba music but have hardly addressed their communicative adaptability in Yoruba programmes on radio. And in view of the erroneous views of Fakoya and Sunday Sun in its editorial comments of March 28, 2004 that fresh ideas and concepts emanating from globalization/science and technology can hardly be captured by the lexis and structure of Nigerian indigenous languages. This paper investigated issues expressed with these idioms, context and strategies for using them in various Yoruba programmes on radio. This is with a view to establishing their communicative and stylistic relevance in Yoruba discourses. The paper adopted Mukarousky’s theory of Standard Language because of its capacity to explain the “differential specifica” between the language of everyday interaction and literary language. Six Yoru?ba? programmes were purposively selected for having sufficient usage of new idioms on these radio stations: 105.6 FM, Lagos; 107.5 FM, Lagos; 92.9 FM, Lagos; 98.5 FM, I?ba?da?n; 99.2 FM, I?ba?da?n and 10.55 FM I?ba?da?n. Lagos and I?ba?da?n were chosen based on the urbanised nature of the two cities and constant usage of new idioms on the programmes. Data were subjected to pragmatic and stylistic analyses. In all these, two issues were expressed: globalization and transportation. Globalization, which was peculiar to the electronic media, occurred in the context of mobile phoning/internet while transportation appeared also in electronic media revealing the context of fraud/embezzlement and infrastructure. Nominalisation, compounding and phonoeasthetic coinages were the linguistic strategies employed for the formation of new idioms in this paper. Nominalization and compounding occurred in virtually all the stations; the former was contextualized in advertisement (e?ro?-a-ya?ra-bi?-a?s?a?) and fraud / embezzlement (o?ko??-o?-ro??-i?bo?n-mi?) while the latter was in the context of advertisement (i?ta?ku?n e??e??te??e??li?), political rift/power play politics (i?ta?ku?n a?gba?ye?), information/security (afa?ra? olo?ke?) and executive class (o??bo??ku?n o?lo??ye??). Phonoeasthetic coinages occurred in the contexts of fraud and information. New idioms and idiomatic expressions, used to express socioeconomic issues in Yoru?ba? routine communication, occurred in mediated and non-mediated contexts on radio and were conveyed through nominalization, compounding and phonoeasthetic coinages. These idioms reflect dynamism and modernity-constrained stylistic choices in Yoruba.

This is a commentary article on study of spiral of silence and spiral of violence, two theoretical concepts in mass communication genre, especially in minority community’s perception expression pattern. This study explores the rise of the spiral of violence trend in the underrepresented and historically silent community. Ii is clear that fear of isolation of minority community force them to remain almost silent (even in existing press) and such behavior compels them to express their voices through series of protest after certain time frame (period), and it comes with spiral of violence form. It may go again in silence and the cycle (silence-violence) continues.

Every individual in a universally developed society has rights and freedoms that should be provided to create their living spaces contemporary. It means that individuals should have the opportunities to get their rights and to create their habitat universally under the roof of the state without being a member of any organization or any religious communities. Therefore, the state has the responsibility for the providing this environment to society, it means that state is for society. This study investigates the transformation process since the proclamation of Republic in Turkey as developing country, analyzed the political problems and fundamental rights and the issue of freedom that state provide the individuals, examined the measures to be taken for the solution of this problem.