Fourth International Conference on Communication & Media Studies

Abstract

Media education has been described as the process of teaching students to interpret, evaluate, and think critically about media systems and the content they produce. The term is further said to be activities taking place in education to teach the use of means of mass communication (video production, use of multimedia, social media, newspapers, etc.). Language use refers to the various applications of speech as a prime media of communication. This work explores the use of language in media education by tertiary institutions in Nigeria. Beyond highlighting the relevance of language in media education, especially at the tertiary level, the dominant language(s) used, it further shows any possible threat to the indigenous and or minority language(s). The study adopts both the qualitative and quantitative research approaches in which survey and content analysis methods are used to generate data. Content-analyzing the curriculum of media courses in the tertiary institutions under reference and examining the data generated through the survey, we discovered the challenges’ of media education through language, the preferred languages of instruction, the place of minority and indigenous languages as well as the implication of this to media education in Nigeria and globally. The study recommends a more liberalized or democratised option in language use in media education.