CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.0       Background to the Study

Radio is one to the mass media that ensure the promotion of culture in every society. It tends to broadcast the way in which society, nation, community or family live their life, and how people relate with one another. Cultural promotion is one of the basic functions of mass media, where people tend to learn and share their culture with vast majority of audience, nations, communities and societies. This tends to contributes positively to the lives of citizens in a specific nation/society (Okunna, 2003).

Cultural promotion in a society is a basic role of mass media, especially radio. The accessibility of radio by the audience makes radio to be one of the basic mass media channel for cultural promotion (Okunna, 2003). Radio at the grassroots level is widely held as an important medium in promoting culture. Radio is one of the oldest forms of mass media. It serves as an instrument of struggle in the search for liberty and social promotion. Due to easy accessibility to radio; especially the community radio by those at the grassroots, it has become a very effective tool in societal development via culture. (Schramm, 1964) in (Daramola, 2003).

Radio as the name suggests is an electronic device that transmits sound from a particular source to the receiver.  Ajayi (2006) assert that:

Radio is primarily a sound medium. Whether you want to inform your listeners about what is happening at home and around the world, to persuade them to purchase or try a product or entertain them with music or drama, all are conveyed by sound to the listeners on radio. Sounds are simply the raw material of radio and consists of periodic waves created by vibrating objects such as musical instruments, loudspeakers or the human voice.

This helps us to understand that radio basically deals with audio or sound to convey information of whatever kind to the listenership of people, may be an individual, group and/or to massive number of people.

In all of these explanations about radio, what we must narrow our attention to in this study is its impact or effect on people culture-wise. As it is important that we know what is radio and how it operates, so it is important to know how it affects our emotions, our life style and the most of all, our actions. One of the functions of media to the society is cultural transmission. Otite and Ogionwo (2006) posits that “In scientific usage, culture is often defined in blanket terms as the total way of life of people”. This simply suggests that we are what we are as a people by the dictates of our culture, because it conveys what we acquire as human beings in ways such as knowledge, traditions, morals, customs, ritual, beliefs, art etc., which are shared and transmitted from generation to generation (Otite and Ogionwo, 2006).

For ease of analysis, the variants of the interpretations of culture can be taxonomized into two (2) distinct categories based on their ideological orientations, which are the idealist and materialist views of culture. The idealist perspective sees culture as being determined by ideas, values and beliefs. This perception apprehends culture as a heritage which transcends time and space and may be described as an ontological variety. For this perspective, culture is inert and changeless. On the other hand, the material view of culture perceives it as a historical product of a specific people at a particular time and space. From this tangent, culture undergoes mutation as the society that produces its transformations. For the materialist perspective, what determines a cultural or social phenomenon is the interaction between human beings and their material conditions and modes of production.

Culture is indeed partly human, partly spiritual and partly materialistic. The humanistic aspect consists ideas, values, knowledge, philosophy, laws, morals and so on. The spiritual facet consist a system of beliefs and religious practices while the materialistic dimension carries artifacts and consumer goods made by man as opposed to things found in nature.

In another vein, Bromislaw Malinowski as cited in Ijomah (2008) defines culture as “an integral whole, consisting of implements, consumer goods, constitution of various groupings, human ideas and crafts, beliefs and customs”.

1.1       Statement of the Problem

Culture, which is described as a complete way of life of people is supposed to be preserved, sustained and observed; as it dictates to a reasonable extent, the thoughts and actions of people. Therefore, media especially radio is saddled with the responsibility of transmitting the idea for which culture is designed for from generation to generation through information, education, entertainment, etc (Okpoko, 2012). The society is steadily reliant on the media for messages that are valuable to the structure and settings of that society to further substantiate its history and values.

However, the media has failed in recent times in this regard. The media are focusing more on educating the society with information that is detrimental to the existence of our immediate culture and traditions. Also, the trend of globalization which has supported cultural imperialism has added salt to the injury. Local radio stations play more of foreign music than our own kind of music. For example, radio stations prefer using foreign music as signature in adverts than the domestic music. Local radio stations compare our own kind of traditional music to that of foreign to determine our advancement as a society. Local radio stations tend to ignore the use of our different domestic languages in programmes and news broadcasting. Also, some of the programmes being carried out in these stations are not geared towards cultural enlightenment.

Thus, the researcher is prompted to carry out a research study the issue on so as to rexpose the relevance of cultural promotion by the mass media in our society.

1.2       Objectives of the Study

i.          To find out if radio has helped in propagating culture to the people of Kaduna South Local Government Area.

ii.         To find out if the people of Kaduna South Local Government Area do listen to KMSC radio.

iii.       To know if KSMC radio has programmes that promotes culture to the people of Kaduna South Local Government Area.

iv.        To know whether those programme KSMC offers do help to propagate culture to the people of Kaduna South Local Government Area.

1.3       Significance of the Study

Radio as medium of communication has wider reach than television, because report has it that people tend to listen to radio more than watching television (Okpoko, 2006). The significance of this study therefore, is that it seeks to verify how radio has been effective in promoting culture as a way of life of people. In this regard, this study focuses on how the people of Kaduna South Local Government Area have been using radio content to gain cultural enlightenment.

The study  also help to draw the attention of the people of Kaduna South Local Government Area to know that radio contents, in form of indigenous music programmes, indigenous cultural festivals, indigenous language programmes, etc have the capability of promoting, sustaining and preserving the different cultural practices in their community, and thereby making them feel proud of their culture.

This study is significant, because the result of this research would provide basis f for KSMC to evaluate its performance as a radio station, whether they are doing well in the broadcasting of radio contents that are culturally educative to its audience, whether other radio stations are ahead of them in that respect, which would definitely provide room for improvement.

Finally, the study would be of great significance to other researchers, as the outcome of the research would provide relevant information in form of material for further research related to this study.

 1.4      Scope of the Study

This study covers Kaduna South Local Government Area, but because of the large geographical area, the large population size and limited of time, the study focuses on television district of Kaduna South Local Government Area.

 1.5      Limitations of the Study

Access to Information is the notion that the public can obtain information in the possession of the state, and in some countries private entity information, for the purpose of being informed about the activities of the state.

The objective of the various research efforts in information access is to simplify and make it more effective for human users to access and further process large and unwieldy amounts of data and information.

Financial constraint is a lack of money because of which you cannot buy something, or do something. When you act under constraint, you are forced to do something which you do not like. No university can impart real education if it is under financial constraints, as a lack of funds certainly hits study programs and research projects which are beneficial to the country.

A communication gap is a state that occurs when communication is not happening when it should be. For example, a well reported communication gap is present between Ministers of the European Parliament and voters. With such vast areas to represent they gauge very little of the general opinion and because of this difficulty people decline to provide input and comment and ultimately it leads to a lack of progress.

The general reasons for a communication gap vary, and can be anything from differing languages and the differing quality of language (both high brow and rude) through to vague instructions, poor definitions and contradictory messages. It can often be down to gender differences or a clash within the workplace.

Few years ago, Nigerians were anxiously concerned on how the federal government can tackle the corrosive and caustic corruption, education, agriculture and power failure, but the recurring spate of hapless killings in the Northern parts of Nigeria diverted the minds of Nigerians to make the federal government to concentrate on tackling security threats in the country.

75 percent of Nigerians still live without having access to regular supply of electricity despite the massive investments made in the energy sector since the sector was privatized. One of the challenges is the lack of supply channels from the national grid. It would have been a source of joy for us to be able to guarantee 24- hour electricity supply to our customers but we cannot give what we don’t have. Also, although there has been an increase in tariff, it is still insufficient; it is still inadequate, it is not sufficient for us to pay our bills, thus putting a very big challenge on us.

1.6       Research Questions

i.          Has radio been helpful in propagating culture to the people of Kaduna South Local Government Area?

ii.          Do the people of Kaduna South Local Government Area listen to KSMC radio?

iii.          Does KSMC radio has programmes that promote culture to the people of                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      Kaduna South Local Government Area?

iv.          Do these programmes KSMC offer actually propagate culture to the people of Kaduna South Local Government Area?

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