The era of information pollution: new definition of news production in Nigeria / Эпоха информационного загрязнения: новое определение производства новостей в Нигерии

Introduction

News production in the world has been passing through a series of paradigm shifts since the beginning of the 21st century. In the west, it could be linked with the rise of media pluralism, advancement in technology ^[1], the emergence of digital media, media proliferation, and the escalation of information pollution. However, in Africa, particularly in Nigeria, the giant shifts in news production could be highly attributed to the return of democracy in 1999 which allowed more private media outlets to emerge (media pluralism).

Each of these shifts which have been occurring for over twenty years has been challenging for professional journalists and media producers in the country due to the nature of Nigerian society. Among these periods are: (i) A period of fighting and advocacy for Press Freedom and freedom of expression, (ii) A period fighting for the Right to Information, (iii) and a period for the need to move from analogue to digital or hybrid-media convergence. These three are all tools for democracy— as the information remains the cardinal pillar of democracy, so has the technology become the bedrock of our society.

The first two (freedom of expression/press freedom and Rights To Information (RTI); that is, rights to inform and be informed were a bit realized and guaranteed. At least, they can be found and referenced in the 1999 Nigerian constitution of sections 39 ^[2] which states, “Every person shall be entitled to freedom of expression, including the freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart ideas and information without interference” even though, the struggle is still ongoing as “journalists are harassed, detained, tortured and killed for doing their job” as noted by Amnesty International ^[3]. Earlier, advanced technologies like the internet and social media were highly praised and still appreciated today for their positive disruption in making democracy work for people, “In 2011, Facebook was hailed as a platform that would bring democracy to the world” as posited by Schiffrin, A. ^[4]. However, some scholars like Evgeny Moronsove in his book, “The Dark Side of the internet: Net delusion’ warned us against being carried away with the illusion of the internet and technologies as tools for democracy as they can be used against the people by the government and that giving everyone the right to abundant information would result to issues ^[4] like we are experiencing in the information ecosystem today.

Here we are today, ten years after the forecasts and critiques of some of these scholars, the advent of misinformation disrupts all that has been fought for, proving those cautionary voices right and sending us back to almost ground zero. Presently, we are facing a high increase in information pollution with more mistrust in mainstream media and constant attacks from politicians and citizens. The question is, are the media free from some of the allegations levied against them or not, as distributors of misinformation and instigator of crisis (religion, ethnicity, tribal, political) around the country? Or what do we have to say about the following: the gradual fading of gatekeeping in today’s media production; the compromise of the newsworthiness for the click-worthiness; agenda-setting being more subjective today instead of objective; and the little scrutiny in editorials? These are questions that require rigorous research for proper ways of redefining news production in an information pollution age.

What does it mean to redefine media production in an information pollution age?

Redefining media production simply means being aware of the obstacles of professional journalism in this era, fast and flexible in adaptability ^[1] and the readiness to battle them for delivering ethical journalism by all means. This is to say that professional journalists and media producers are at war and they need to be fully prepared for that. They are at war with two sets of people: visible and invisible as we observe it.

• Visible: These sets of people are the dubious individuals and politicians using the media for their gain (power, economic, popularity etc) simply because they are not ecstatic with the narrative of a certain news story that does not conform with their interest. They will simply declare it as ‘fake’.
• Invisible: These are innocent individuals with no knowledge of why certain news items are and for what purpose. These sets of people are the ones who read and share the headlines without following the link to read the whole story whether they align with each other before they form an opinion on such and the ones who read a rewritten headline or story from malicious sharers that are using faulty headlines for personal gain.

These sets of people are the reason professional journalists and media producers need to tailor their content accordingly for effective and ethical delivery. In realizing this, we recommend paying keen attention to the following; the usage of headlines, online news editors, and gatekeeping.

Headlines as a strong tool of media production

Headlines are powerful tools for news production in this era and remain one of the key tools for circulating misinformation. According to Kuiken et. al. ^[5] “more and more newspaper articles are consumed on the internet rather than from physical newspapers”. Some scholars stress that headlines are presented with ‘facts and opinions where parts of speech play a seminal role in influencing a reader’s mind’ ^[6] and allow her/him to discern the overall content of articles to choose the one of interest or that may catch the attention and lure him to open the article to read ^[7]. Today, almost all mainstream media outlets (television, radio, newspaper) are present on social media and they share their stories with the usage of headlines through links from the website or using captions for breaking news stories.

Functions of headlines

Kuiken et. al. ^[5] pointed out two distinct functions that are attributed to headlines: one is to summarize the article or highlight the main point of that article and the other is to attract the attention of the readers and provoke them to read the article. A typical example of this is clickbait. Clickbaitis the headline used deliberately which may contain ambiguity to attract the reader to the main article ^[8]. Kuiken et. al. ^[5] further identified the following as some of the key features of clickbait headlines;

- “Simplification, spectacularization, negativity, and provoking content” another one noted is stylistic.

- Forward referencing: referring to something that is mentioned in the article. Signal words like “this,” “why” or “what” are used for forward referencing.

- The use of questions has also been linked to clickbait headlines

We have come across a series of headlines on social media that have little or nothing to do with the original article. Media producers need to pay attention to the usage of headlines ethically and avoid ambiguity in them that may result in misinforming the audience (directly or indirectly).

Online News editor

The emergence of new media brought in social media news editors and managers, many of whom do not have a journalism background, not to talk of becoming an editor for news content. If they must be used because of their technical skills, they need to be well trained and paired with experienced editors who are not tech-savvy. This will help in ensuring effective gatekeeping and scrutiny for good journalism and image building for the media outlet, and to serve as a safe place free from information pollution.

Gatekeeping

Gatekeeping is a key aspect of journalism in ensuring and maintaining ethics in media production. This, as we noted earlier, is fading due to the advancement in technologies and media proliferation that place the media tool in the hands of everyone and turn almost everyone to content creators too. Nevertheless, professionals should be able to distinguish themselves and never compromise standards and ethics for anything. Tsfati et. al. ^[9] noted in their paper:

“Politicians’ opportunities to disseminate disinformation directly to the public bypassing the media’s gatekeeping and their editorial scrutiny, have increased with the rise of social media and the possibilities they afford and with a weakening of ‘factual accountability”.

We would like to reiterate some of the key duties of journalists to be maintained at all costs according to the existing literature;

- Journalists need to keep their role perceptions tightly. An essential part of journalists' professional duties is to look out for or identify stories that are intended to manipulate and disinform. By doing so, journalists need to verify (and correct) the source by all professional means.

- Traditional news values should be strictly adhered to.

- Maintenance of professionalism regardless of the era we find ourselves to redeem the image and gain the trust of our audience.

Conclusion

News production in today’s world has indeed taken another dimension and is greatly affected by the polarization of information disorder. For this, every stakeholder of news production must stay alert in arming themselves with the necessary tool to combat this menace that poses threat to the growth of the journalism profession which is one of the key pillars of democracy. One of these key threats is the decline of trust in institutions to which the media is part of a fourth estate. And one good news according to a study conducted by the authors on news trust and sources of political information in Nigeria and Ghana, we found out that mainstream news media remain the hope of the people for accurate information as many are fully aware of the misleading information on their digital platform ^[10]. So, they still hold mainstream media as a backup for legitimate information. For this reason, professional journalists and media producers must not fail the public hope and trust in them by reporting ethically no matter the circumstances.