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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In this interview with SAKIBU OLOKOJOBI, Oso speaks on some key issues on the development of journalism in Nigeria, particularly the effects of the New Media.  He expresses his opinion on the raging fire of controversy over hate speech and the attempt by the government to regulate the social media, among other things.  Excerpts:  

Sir, how would you assess the development of Journalism in Nigeria over the years, particularly in the area of its effects?

There have been changes – some quite positive, some negative.  On the positive side, one would see that journalism has contributed to the widening and deepening of democratic process in the country.  So many people now have access to the media, whether traditional or the New Media.  On that score, I think one can say that there has been a lot of positive things, especially when you look at accountability, with the media holding those in government accountable, trying to put some checks on the way those in government behave and how they run the policies.  Critical voices are coming up through the media space. So, one can say that we have had some positive developments.

But on the other hand, there have been some drawbacks, particularly with the advent of the New Media.  It is like anybody can say anything without any caution, without any sensitivity to the complexity of the Nigerian society.  I’m a little bit careful using “hate speech.” It is a kind of nebulous concept that some people can easily appropriate to muzzle the freedom of the press or freedom of expression.  But there are evidences that people are taking advantage of the existence of New Media and even some traditional media to propagate causes that can create problem.  But I think the effect is more on the positive side than the negative side.

You talked about the advent of the New Media. Has it been given the required attention in journalism schools as to warrant a change of curriculum?

Yes, somehow.  You now find out that you have courses addressing some of the concerns and challenges that are coming with the New Media in terms of how you write for the new platforms, how to manage and how to organise those new platforms.  Also, attention is being given to developments in the new platforms – how to address public issues and public concerns.  So, it has effect on the curriculum of communication studies.

What is your assessment of the influx of online publications as compared to the conventional ones?

I think we need to separate some of these platforms.  You cannot compare Premium Times, The Cable and a few others with some online publications.  Some online publications are merely online because they take advantage of new technologies.  The serious ones are more or less like the traditional media in the sense that they still do gate-keeping and observe the ethics of the profession.  The other ones are not bothered about all that; they are only interested in how many people visit their websites so that they can attract advertisement and so on.  Those are the ones that are creating problems.  But there are some that are professionally run.

Some have expressed concern over the overwhelming number of online publications.  Do you share this position?

Yes, there is no doubt that people are concerned and many people are raising issues about the proliferation of the online platforms.  Some of them, you can’t even trace them and they can do anything and get away with it.  They can open a platform today, cause havoc and move on.  They have no address. It gives the people the opportunity of anonymity and all that. That is part of the problem of New Media.

But it has its positive side too.  During the military era, and we have also witnessed such during this era too, where government can move in and say “we are arresting journalists or we are closing down a media organisation.” If you do that these days, or you muzzle an editor, you are wasting your time. Even if you are the proprietor of the media organisation, you will be wasting your time because that story will have outlet in another platform, particularly online platform.

The kind of control that those in power once wielded has reduced drastically with the arrival of some of the internet-based media outlets.  When I say those in power, I mean business people, some so powerful that they can change the editorial policy of a newspaper with their advert money, or withhold certain information because they have the power of advertising.  That has more or less been reduced. So, on that score, they have their uses and advantages for openness, for transparency in governance, business and things like that.

Some have complained about the infiltration of the system by some who are not journalists and carry out their work without cognizance of the ethics of the profession.

Journalism is very important, but very delicate.  It can be likened to dropping an egg.  Once it drops, it splits and you can’t put it together.  That is the danger in journalism. When you put something in the public space, it travels, it goes everywhere.  Before you know it, it could ignite crisis.  That is where the issue of professionalism, ethics and social responsibility come in.  If you have people who don’t have any conscious professional obligation, feel nobody can hold them responsible and they feel they are not responsible to anybody, then, you have a problem.  That is where the issue of training and ethical standard come into play.

When you have so many people that don’t have these things, it is dangerous.  It is like putting a gun in the hand of a child; he doesn’t know what it is; if he pulls the trigger… That’s the danger in it.

The decision of the Federal Government to regulate the social media is said to be based on happenings in the social media generally.  I know that some time ago you said the government should rather educate the public on the use of the social media instead of trying to regulate.  How do you feel that the government has resolved to regulate the social media despite the disapproval by individuals and organisations?

The Federal Government is acting based on fear and hysteria.  We are conducting a research now on hate speech and fake news during the 2019 election.  We are surprised that we don’t have so many.  So, it is like there is so much noise about hate speech and fake news. One person makes a statement and everybody begins to tag on it.  One is not saying there is no hate speech.  There are, but they are not as big as people are making it.  It is not as big to the extent that it will make us have a law that will criminalise speech and lead to death sentence.  I think it is a hysterical response to a very little issue. We need to ask ourselves the question: What has brought hate speech to the front burner?  It was not here some four, five or six years ago.  Why is it here now?  Why is there so much panic or moral preaching about it?  Government has not gone into that.  We need to know the source of the problem before we can think of the solution.  The government is not acting as it should.  All these issues about death sentence and hate speech law, I think are knee jerk reaction to something that is real but not as enormous as we are making it.

One can even conclude that the government is using the debate to divert attention from some of the crucial problems in the Nigerian society.  There is a danger in that.  You tend to overlook some of the critical problem and just focus on something that is ephemeral that if we do the right thing, will fade away.

The Minister of Information, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, said the regulation had nothing to do with professional journalists but those who are not guided by any rule.

It’s just the same hysterical response.  I think there are enough laws to handle some of these situations.  So, this kind of selective response to certain issues of the moment does not really solve any problem.  Rather, they can complicate it.  And it should be noted that government acquires power incrementally, particularly an authoritarian government.  “Oh, we are targeting those who are not trained”, before you know it, they move on again, “We are targeting those unregistered newspapers.”  Before you know it, they swoop on the established newspapers and journalists.  It is an incremental thing; it doesn’t come at a go.

How best can the National Assembly be stopped from enacting the hate speech law? I’m asking this question because there are complaints in some quarters that the necessary professional organisations are not making as much noise or taking steps required to stop the move.

The Nigerian Guild of Editors has made a case against the bill.  Don’t forget that the public outcry is having some impact.  The man who started it all, Abudullahi, has now said, “No, we will remove the death sentence.” It is like, let opposition come from different fronts; let’s galvanise all the different groups, civil society and others for mass protest against this bill.  Protest does not mean that we should carry placards.  When you hear the voice of Professor Soyinka and you hear some of the governors saying we don’t want this… When all these are coming up, they will have a rethink.  People in the National Assembly are also human beings. I heard some people in the House of Representatives saying that the bill would not pass through in the House of Representatives.  That means that the outcry from civil society organisations is having some effects.

The coming of the online platforms has put most of the conventional newspapers on their toes as stories are rendered stale before they can publish them the next day.  How best can they solve a problem as this?

What will sell the conventional newspapers today is not just breaking news because they can’t compete with the online platforms.  Where they can have an advantage is where they put the issue in proper context.  So, it is not just the question of informing, they should be more interested in educating the public like doing analyses, providing background information, doing well researched feature articles and carrying out investigative journalism and so on.  These are the areas the conventional newspapers can focus on.

You would realise that most of them now have online versions, but they must go back and put things in perspective for the next day. That is how they can still have an advantage.

With recent developments, what would you say is the future of the conventional newspapers? 

There is a future. There are people who would, like I said, still want to read the news behind the news.  What is the context? What does it mean?  The conventional newspapers must continue to provide meanings to events – the context, the background.  Online platforms cannot do such creditably except they want to wait till the next day. Immediately the news break, they report.  But people would want to know what it means.  That is the future of the newspapers.  And of course, they must have online versions where they can also break the news and the following day, they put them in perspectives.

Apart from the challenges posed by the online platforms, the conventional newspapers are facing other problems which have made it impossible to pay salaries, take care of certain basic needs to keep the organisations running.  What are the problems, really?

The problems are many.  A major one has to do with advertisement.  Advertisers are moving to online platforms; the young people are also moving online. You would find out that the advertisement rates online are a little bit lower than what you get in the conventional media.  Why would you go to the conventional newspapers if you can reach your target audience – these upward mobile young men who are checking their phones even in the bus and okada.  If your advertisements are able to read them, then you would not want to go to the newspapers. That is one problem.

Two:  The economic situation is affecting them. Time was when people would buy three, four newspapers in a day.  Hardly can people buy one now because of the economy.  The disposable income available has gone down considerably.  That has affected circulation.  That has affected adverts.  These are some of the challenges that they face.  That is why some are saying that there should be a new business modem.  Like what is happening now in Guardian in London.  They are now asking people to support them, and they are getting a lot of support with people donating.  Some other newspapers are going into some other businesses where they can still make money and support the publication of the newspaper.  They need to think outside the box.  They cannot rely on the old modem and survive; they need to re-engineer their thinking and get into new business activities to support the newspapers especially if they want independent newspapers.

There are numerous awards coming up these days.  Would you say they are actually contributing to the growth of journalism?

Yes, if they are genuine awards and by genuine organisations.  I know of three awards for journalism in this country that are quite credible –Wole Soyinka Award for Investigative Journalism, DAME, and the Nigerian Media Merit Award.  Those three are credible.  Those who are behind them are also credible.  But, there could be others that I don’t really know about.  My only fear is about journalists giving awards to those they should report.  You find beat associations coming together to give award to people like the “Best Governor of the Year,” the “Best Minister of the Year” and so on. That is where the danger is. It is not their business to be celebrating those they should be reporting. Let those who read their reports celebrate them.  I’m also not too keen in journalists taking awards from government. If the award is organised by government, I think one should be careful about it.

Why is that so sir?

I read a book about investigative journalism. The author said when the dog that is supposed to be watching somebody begins to eat with those that it is watching, then there is a problem; the bite is gone.  That is where my fear is.

What is your opinion about the awards judged through voting on the internet without necessarily reading the works of those contesting?

I don’t support that.  You find out that those nominated begin to campaign, sending text to you saying, “vote for me, vote for me.”  Those who are voting don’t even know them.  They’ve never read them. That is the kind of thing they do in Big Brother.  It shouldn’t go into a professional award.  You don’t hear Nobel Award saying the global community should vote for those to be awarded.  Those are cheap awards that are tagged to entertainment and celebrities.  It shouldn’t be for credible professionals.

*Concluding part on Wednesday.

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