Mass Communication and African Indigenous Societies: The Meeting Point

Abstract

Before the incursion of the white colonialists, communication in a typical African setting was basically endogenous. That is, communities were individualistic as such there was no need to reach out to a larger population of people. Each society developed the necessary communication media. However, the coming of the western style of communication, practically driven by the need to reach out to many people at the same time, brought about a change in communication approach in Africa. The need to develop Africa by the imperialist set the tone for a top-down approach which disallowed participation, and invariably, un-indigenous in nature. In view of this, the introduction of mass communication culture relegated media to the baseline. Thus, this paper examines the meeting point as well as the impact of mass communication on indigenous communication in Nigeria. The paper discovered that the impact of western mass communication on African indigenous communication is enormous. It found out that western mass communication has in one way or the other diminished the impact of indigenous communication. Thus, the paper concluded that for the effective development of rural areas to become achievable, both western mass media and indigenous media should be deployed.