I will ignore the debate about who is to blame for the mess at Chrisland School. Rather I will focus on what interests me because there’s a knowledge gap there.

If like me you can take a step back and dispassionately consider the issues around the mess; you’ll notice the toxic influence of social media and the damage this is doing to our young ones.

Here’s the problem with the attention economy; young girls are desperate to adopt the tested formats that have made Kim Kardashian a ‘goddess’. That format has been proved to be effective by Jane Mena and Tacha just to mention a few. As for young boys; it’s either they want to be the next big sports star or the next big-time musician. Either way, young folks just want to become a celebrity overnight.

If they have ABSOLUTELY must use a smartphone, pay attention to what they do. I advise you check and delete LIKEE application for a start.

They forget that the road to the point where social capital becomes profitable is fraught with minefields. Or that the self-consuming process of lifestyle of a micro-celebrity is psychologically punishing. This is why I pity parents who are so media illiterate that they will allow their underage children uncontrolled access to the Internet.

The young girl at the centre of the mess in Chrisland had access to a smartphone; data and a ring light for her home-made videos posted to Likee.

I know, times have changed. These days, sometimes teachers require young folks to do take-home assignments that require them to surf the Internet. My generation didn’t have these pressures and the unnecessary exposure was good for us.

These times call for different approaches to parenting. I reckon the parents of the young girl should be looking at themselves to see where they have failed.

Here’s a free advice to them and other parents with children under 18.

If your children do not ABSOLUTELY need a smartphone, then withdraw it. If you need to be able to reach them in case your family is always on the move, give them a feature phone.

If they have ABSOLUTELY must use a smartphone, pay attention to what they do. I advise you check and delete LIKEE application for a start. Initially released in July 2017 as LIKE video, the recently rebranded Singapore-based app is challenging TikTok for dominance in the fast-growing video space. LIKEE offers an array of attractions for young users: filters, stickers and cutting edge special effects. It also allows kids to live stream to their fan base.

If you need to be able to reach them in case your family is always on the move, give them a feature phone.

Problem is, LIKEE is too PERMISSIVE and was described as “a paedophile’s paradise,” by Family Zone cyber expert and prominent child psychologist, Michael Carr-Greg. He goes on to add, “Predators are not stupid, they know exactly where the kids are and how to find them.” Among other problems with LIKEE, Family Zone notes that:

• Accounts can’t be made private
• Users can filter a search by gender
• There is no age verification process
• Mature and risky content abounds
• In-app parental controls are ineffectual

In monitoring you children, also constantly check what they do on Instagram and Tik Tok.

Whatever you do, do not encourage your children to start building a career as micro celebrities until they are fully grown and ready for the psychologically draining process. In in doubt, ask Jane Mena and Tacha how they are coping.

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Even the uninitiated acknowledges that journalism has changed permanently. That journalism has been in a state of flux because of the digitalization of media is not in doubt since we all encounter the effects of the changes in our everyday lives. However, there is good reason to believe that such street-level understanding is missing when it comes to what the changes mean for everyday media consumption. Most of the confusion, it appears, concern the question of what qualifies to be described as journalism and who earns the right to be addressed as a journalist. Let me start with the obvious – the transformation of the media user.

Yes, institutional media has lost its power to determine what news is and thereby it’s power to set the agenda within the mediated communicative space. Instead, ordinary media users have been transformed from mere users into producers. Jay Rosen called them ‘the people formerly known as the audience’ but in order to properly describe the transformation, I will use Alvin Toffler’s ‘prosumer,’ the term he used to describe the media user when the thin line dividing the producer and the consumer is removed.

Nigeria can do without the rotten work of people who delude themselves as being journalists because they think they are performing acts of journalism.

However, and this is the fundamental shift: people may be producing and disseminating information, but the critical test is: how much of what they are doing can and should be classified as journalism. I strongly believe that to miss this point and decorate everyone who curates and distributes the work of others including gossip dressed as news with a title reserved for distinguished members of the fourth estate would be a disservice to journalism.

I have heard the arguments, sometimes by prominent journalists, that editors are losing their influence because other nodes of influence are developing in the networked communicative space that empowers non-professionals. Some of those arguments are only stating the obvious because this is exactly what distinguishes the new media ecosystem from traditional media. In a way, new media democratizes communication by allowing marginalized groups that otherwise would have been excluded to participate in the communicative process.

However, to measure a journalist’s overall influence in the same way that you do a micro celebrity would be missing the point totally. Those who have done this assume that the journalist and the micro-celebrity have the same motivation for what they do. Understanding the motivation helps to address the question of whether all who perform acts of journalism can be described as journalists.

I have highlighted what motivates the micro celebrity in the past and it is a waste of time to repeat it here. However, let’s just bear in mind that social media provides the platform that allows micro celebrities ‘perform’ on a stage; accumulate sizeable followership; and milk the numbers for money. In other words, those performances you see on Instagram and other platforms are deliberate, carefully written acts aimed at building social capital that can then be exchanged for real cash.

Hartmut Esser’s essay ‘The Two Meanings of Social Capital’ provides two levels of understanding of how social capital works. First, it speaks of the individual actor’s resources that can be called in from their close friends and acquaintances and second; it describes the performance of the entire network and how all actors relate. For easy understanding, observe how those upcoming actors appear for each other in skits; the quality and frequency of guest appearances you can muster depending on your social capital. This is a model that has been tested and used by micro celebrities and celebrities to full effect. Celebrity and music artiste, Davido’s recent call for donations from his circle and the massive response he received confirms his standing within that network. Simply put, the networked media environment pretty much works this way; non-professionals connect directly with people to build social capital that can be called up when there is a need.

Traditionally, journalists have always been a bridge between newsmakers and the people; and in that role those who are worthy of the calling have been guided by certain values and standards including authenticity of content, source verification and accuracy. Anyone claiming to be a journalist but who ignores those values and standards triggers an alarm and raises questions about any claim to being a member of the fourth estate. It’s that simple. And I think this should be how journalists and editors are measured and not their followership on social media.

The media is also experiencing transformation on another level – the distribution of news. Hitherto, media users would search for information either by buying newspapers, tuning on to radio or their television sets. Obviously reinforced by digitalization of media and the transformation of the media users, people no longer search for news because it is everywhere around them. The information overload calls to mind the image of fish and water used by Marshall McLuhan about half a century back to describe the people’s relationship with the media. Even if you were to try, you cannot miss the stream of information coming at you from the moment you wake up until you go to bed.

Our increasingly mobile world and shortening attention span also means commercial media must find a way to make money, hence the growing adoption of artificial intelligence to profile media users in order to target them more effectively. The more people use mobile devices and social networking sites, the more content producers and platform owners know about their preferences; and ultimately, the more they can be targeted almost with surgical precision. Like Ramón Salaverría and Mathias-Felipe de-Lima-Santos in their article ‘Towards Ubiquitous Journalism: Impacts of Iot on News’ suggest, the AI technologies ‘surreptitiously select and provide the journalistic, advertising and commercial contents that keep users’ attention, following the interests of news providers and advertisers.’ Notice the paradox here; the ‘people formerly known as the audience’ have been empowered by new media affordances, yet commercial media has found a way to control what media users consume.

This is where I think some clarity is required. I have just concluded PhD research that critically looked at how to hardcode citizen journalism into the Nigerian media and if there is one thing that strikes me; it is that there is so much confusion about the exact role and limits of non-professionals doing reportorial work. I was privileged to have interviewed twelve of Nigeria’s finest journalists in the biggest news organisations and I get the sense that legacy media is aware of the impact of citizen journalism on the media. I also understand that most of them are exploring ways to respond to the digital disruption in ways that allow them to maintain their overall influence. More on the result of that research later.

There’s no universal agreement on what it means to be a citizen journalist but one way to understand the term is to remember that whether it is institutional or non-institutional; we’re talking essentially about citizen witnessing, the best examples of which are found in times of crisis.  Sohaib Athar’s tweet of the raid on Osama bin Laden’s hideout in Abottabad, Northern Pakistan in 2016 is one example of an ordinary citizen performing acts of journalism. Janis Krums’ tweet in January 2009 of the image of the US Airways Flight 1549 that had made an emergency landing in the Hudson River shortly after take-off from the LaGuardia Airport is another example of an ordinary citizen using personal social media account to do what amounts to serious reportorial work.

Those may be classical cases of citizen witnessing but the idea also encompasses whistleblowing, of which Julian Assange would be the best example. Wikileaks, the site he launched in January 2007 has been an advocate of a new order in which powerful people would no longer be able to hide their wrongdoings. His method is to steal and leak official documents; sometimes in collaboration with institutional media who otherwise would not have had access to such protected secrets.

The likes of Sohaib Athar, Janis Krums and Julian Assange performed acts of journalism because their citizen witnessing, and leaks qualify as serious reportorial work. By serious reportorial work, I only reference those who distinguish between ordinary people who produce some reasonable useful content from those who merely aggregate what others have produced; re-post, link, remix and distribute to others. To the extent that they are participating in the news process, it is alright to describe them as citizen journalists, but I strongly feel that this should be all the credit they get.

I tend to agree with those who feel that even if you remove all boundaries from the definition of who is a citizen journalist; the more noble variant – of citizen witnessing and whistleblowing – draw attention to the shortcoming we see in the other variants which thrive on re-working content produced by others. The shortcoming represents both an opportunity and a threat and this is where I see legacy media struggling the most. I understand the intense competition from non-professionals and citizen witnesses as well as the need for speed but when trained journalists have no choice but quote citizen journalists as their principal sources, then we have to worry.

Sure, new media has removed walls that separated journalists from newsmakers and the ‘people formerly known as the audience.’ However, even if a journalist were to take what the ‘people formerly known as the audience’ provide; it should be used as a source which is then subjected to the same rigorous processing that normally would apply to other sources. There is reason to believe that the management of the legacy media organisations understand what the threats mean to their continued existence. I came away from my engagement with some of them in the course of my research with the understanding that legacy media organisations want to be respected as authentic sources of news. Regardless, looking around the Nigerian media landscape, there are signs to suggest this won’t be easy to accomplish.

Self-proclaimed investigative journalists like the wacky one who courts controversy with everything she does, are in this category of non-professionals operating from the micro celebrity playbook.

Legacy media organisations already have digital-born newspapers like Sahara Reporters, Premium Times and The Cable, all of which are producing excellent journalistic content, to contend with. You don’t have to be a journalist to be worried that they now face a far more nebulous threat from micro celebrities who are not content with playing in their natural space on Instagram and other social networking sites but rather would like to be addressed as journalists. Self-proclaimed investigative journalists like the wacky one who courts controversy with everything she does, are in this category of non-professionals operating from the micro celebrity playbook. The only difference is that while the micro celebrities of Instagram are happy to be called influencers, the more desperate ones are so brazen in their appropriation of the title ‘investigative journalist’. In that desperation many are dangerously straying into the revered space for serious reportorial work for which they lack the capacity and the commitment to the long-respected values and standards that make journalism what it is.

Their ‘performance’ would have been laughable if it were not so insidious as to be dangerous. We are used to the crazy, rotten girls of Instagram entertaining us with all sorts of ‘performances,’ but the activities of these smooth operators are dangerous because the media landscape is muddied already no thanks to the digital disruption. Nigeria can do without the rotten work of people who delude themselves as being journalists because they think they are performing acts of journalism.

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Nigeria has always been an interesting case. It’s the richly endowed country that is also home to some of the world’s poorest. It is where sprawling mansions exist in close proximity to slums. For some unexplainable reason, we have struggled to transform the mineral and human endowment into a better quality of life for all Nigerians. Inequality has been a permanent feature of our nation, the rich-poor divide being one of the most dispiriting.

Right from independence in 1960, when we seemed to replace one group of ‘lords’ with another, democratic politics and prebendal politics have been, what Richard Joseph, famously termed ‘one side of the same coin.’ Since 1987 when he made those observations in his book, ‘Democracy and Prebendal Politics In Nigeria: The Rise and Fall Of the Second Republic,’ politics has become the most lucrative business in the land and elevated government officials or anyone close to them, thereby furthering inequality.

This elitist system leaves the majority struggling to get anything close to a decent living. The mansions, big cars, and private jets have mostly defined inequality, but private education has lately become another feature of the widening gap between the rich and poor.

Embraced first by the rich and the middle-class, private education is preferred because of the belief that it gives the student a shot at a good life. The idea is simple: a good education will grant access to the good life and open the door to the elite, pampered class. Until 20 – 30 years ago, public schools guaranteed this social mobility. I am in the generation that knew only public schooling, and I confess they were great in those days. I recall my time in Ilesa Grammar school in the early 80s and the fact that we had teachers from the Commonwealth, including those from Canada and India. My experience at the University of Ibadan from the mid-80s was no less enriching, but my children have known nothing but private schooling.

Most of our tertiary first-generation institutions, like the University of Ibadan, are particularly worst hit, a lot of them looking worse than they did when some of us were there.

Most of the public secondary schools and universities in our time had the human and infrastructural capacity, which helped to provide quality at reasonable costs. However, years of misplaced policy, neglect, and mismanagement have turned most public schools into shadows of themselves. It looks as though policymakers and the schools stood still at a time of rapid technological changes and increasing demand for school places.  Most of our tertiary first-generation institutions, like the University of Ibadan, are particularly worst hit, a lot of them looking worse than they did when some of us were there.

The constant closures due to protests and labour disputes worsen a bad situation. Students enrol now not sure of when they would graduate; the result being that sometimes, four-year programmes don’t finish in six or seven years. Even though there is no evidence to suggest that private schools are necessarily better, most parents are happy that their wards can at least finish academic programmes on schedule. I doubt, though, if any parent will question the quality in some of those private secondary schools and universities; otherwise, they won’t be attracting the level of patronage we are seeing. The only danger, of course, is that the worsening state of public schools could further the inequality because hundreds of thousands of otherwise promising students are either denied access to quality education or when they manage to secure places, delayed for longer than necessary. Not only do many of those whose parents can afford private schools move faster, but they also end up abroad for graduate studies, further stretching their advantage. This is important because top companies appear to favour those with degrees from foreign schools in recruitment.

If the case of public schools was bad, Covid-19 threatens to make it worse. Lockdown learning is proving to be a measure of social inequality with the children from affluent homes and neighbourhoods enjoying full timetables and those from poorer families getting no home lessons. The lockdown imposed to curtail the spread of the virus means Churches, Mosques, businesses, and schools are closed. This disruption to normal life has challenged leaders and exposed the shortcomings of those who are either not prepared for change or lack the capacity to cope with it. While some are complaining about the lockdown, others have embraced it and are utilising technology to keep their companies, schools, and churches going. It should worry us, especially where our children’s education is concerned, that those willing to embrace the change are making progress during lockdown while others wait. I am impressed that some secondary schools are organising tutoring online, using Zoom and WhatsApp and that some higher institutions like Babcock University have concluded plans to conduct semester examinations online. While this is commendable, and knowing that most public schools are ill-equipped for anything but in-person tutoring and supervision, the question is: would Covid-19 further inequality?

This is a question that should be of interest to us all since increasing globalization has made education a measurement of a nation’s ability to compete in the future. The world is shrinking every day, and top firms have a pool of talents from across the globe to pick from. You don’t even get in that pool unless you have received what can be considered standard education and training. Nigeria already lags in this regard, falling behind other African countries in funding for research and development as well as research output. The frightening thing is that we even risk dropping further behind others in this all-important race due to our inability to adapt to meet the challenges of Covid-19. For instance, while most of our universities are closed, South African schools were quick to decide to move teaching online. You cannot but be impressed with the detailed arrangements. Telecoms companies were persuaded to make 30Gb free data available to students for a month to enable them to attend online classes via Zoom or Microsoft Teams. Some schools made laptops offers to students who needed assistance in that regard. The result of such quick thinking is the students have only missed the few weeks it took for the schools to set up and move lectures online. This is where the approach taken by the likes of Babcock is commendable and why the Federal Ministry of Education, as well as the National Universities Commission (NUC), must rethink their policy on tertiary education in Nigeria.

Governments at the federal and state levels, which fund tertiary education should understand the enormity of the problem and increase budgetary allocation to the sector to enable our schools compete on the global stage.

Covid-19 has shattered social relationships as we know it and may alter the way we worship, do business or study permanently.

Forward-thinking policymakers must ask: what if restrictions on social gatherings last longer than anyone can imagine? If the lockdown continues into 2021, for instance, would our tertiary institutions remain locked till then? We need to learn from those who are adapting in an exemplary fashion and act fast. Some institutions are already making preparations on the assumption that Covid-19 is the new normal, and in the absence of anything to prove otherwise, that should be a model for everyone. The California State University, America’s largest four-year college system, announced last week it is cancelling most in-person classes in its 23 campuses from September. As we approach the next school session, others may well follow the lead. The University of Johannesburg last Wednesday held a virtual graduation ceremony, again signalling the readiness to work with this new normal. With available technology, nothing should stop business meetings, church service, and tutoring.

Nigeria lags behind many African nations because successive governments and the NUC have failed miserably with policies on tertiary education, but Covid-19 presents an opportunity to course-correct. University teaching staff have always complained about funding, and their arguments may be valid because others are outspending Nigeria in research funding. Federal and state governments, Tetfund and university administrators have failed students but Covid-19 is a chance to redeem the situation. The most puzzling of all is the continued relevance of Tertiary Education Trust (Tetfund), which among other things, was founded to ‘promote cutting-edge technologies, ideas and organizational skills in education, and ensure that projects are forward-looking as well as responding to present needs.’ It has to be said though that Tetfund has done creditably well by promoting quality scholarship through foreign post graduate scholarships, and conferences that expose lecturers to the most recent theories, practices and skills. However, for as long as students in our higher institutions are still forced to submit academic papers and thesis in print; If they have to print out copies of PowerPoint to read from when making presentations; if lockdown means schools are on break until further notice; If instruction and supervision of students cannot hold without physical contact, then Tetfund is failing in one of its most important goals. Future interventions should be directed at building IT infrastructure to enable more convenient and effective learning as well as re-training of teaching staff to make them IT-compliant.

Governments at the federal and state levels, which fund tertiary education should understand the enormity of the problem and increase budgetary allocation to the sector to enable our schools compete on the global stage. Budgetary allocations usually signal the intention of policymakers and recent figures show other African countries have a better understanding of the importance of the place of education in national development. Available data shows that South Africa’s allocation to educated in 2018 was 6.16% of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), while Ghana managed 3.99% for that year. The World Bank and the United Nations Education and Scientific Organisation (UNESCO) do not have the figures for Nigeria but the federal allocation to education in 2018 was N102.9 billion, which amounts to well below 1% when the Naira rate and the GDP rate for that year are factored in. Lastly, university administrators must also re-strategise, possibly by building businesses on research and development instead of selling bread and bottled water. With a strong partnership with corporate Nigeria, they can generate more funds to invest in IT. Only a few public universities have the required infrastructure to even admit online so, to ask for remote teaching would be asking for too much. It sounds daunting, but there is no other way to compete with the rest of the world, especially if we are to address the inequality between private schools and their public counterparts.

*Olaniyan is a communication specialist and PhD candidate at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg

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