THE ADVENT OF MODERN COMMUNICATION GADGETS IMPLICATION ON NIGERIAN JOURNALISM

The aim of this study was to determine the advent of modern communication gadgets: implications for Nigerian journalism. To achieve this aim, the survey research method and chi-square were used. Using the purposive sampling technique. Three research questions and one alternative hypothesis guided the study. Research findings showed that social media have enhanced the productivity of journalists and a great number of journalists use them to source for news among other things. To this end, the researcher recommended that journalists should carry out a research on the available modern communication gadgetsin order to identify reliable and trustworthy social networking sites and use them to discharge their journalistic duties. The researcher suggested that further studies should be carried out on the role of social media in sustaining democracy, advertising, public relations and public opinion polls.

Communication is so central to human existence and all human activities that it would be fool hardy for any group or nation to put it in the background in its economic, political, social and other activities in fact, we are bold to say that communication is the most vital factor in building an organized, united and progressive nation; the without it, there will be no national entity and no effective solution to national problems and national development.  All these can be confidently said because of the obvious fact that all human activities take place in cross-five of information flow and communication, whether in inter-personal, group, local, state national or international level.

Man was created to be gregarious and because of these qualities, they have always had to fall back on one another in interaction recognized as human communication.

This refers to the process of transmitting message, idea and attitudes and creating meanings between two and more people usually through the natural facilities of the human voices, sensory organs facial expressions, body manipulations and lately machine-assisted channels or devices.  Even now, the import and importance of communication in our modern and sophisticated society cannot be over emphasized.

The awareness for these necessities introduced mass communication into the world.  It is a process by which a complex organization with the aid of one or more machine produce and transmit message directed at large, nitrogenous, diversified and scattered audience.  It is also the act of communicating to mass audience through the use of mass media such as books, newspapers, magazines, films, radio, television and computers to mention but fees, that the field of journalism in Nigeria have used as a medium to get information across the audience.  Communication had been in existence all the while but it was never a kind of mass involvement because the world them lacked advanced equipment’s or gadgets that could carry these messages and information to many people at the same time (mass effect).  The great  innovations of communication gadgets from early 30’s to date has changed communication from primitive kind to modern (mass) kind.

Mass communication gadgets is as old as mass communication itself because the nation of getting people involved in communication in mass would have remained in the background if the gadgets were not modern minced or advanced technological.  Mass communication started with Johannes Gutenberg invention of the printing press.

This invention led to proliferation of the print materials such as books, newspapers and magazines, through these media more people were reached as it concerns communication.  The electronics media communication came on the scene with the invention of such gadgets as radio and television.