Fourth International Conference on Communication & Media Studies

Abstract

The main challenge of emerging African democracies is dealing with contestations of indigenous cultures with the tenets of global democracy. In Africa, democracy as a system of government and economic commodity, and especially in the context of globalisation, it is increasingly being perceived as a burden of western cultures and foregn praxis being unbundled upon a highly sensitive, deeply communual but vulnerable member of global community. For a highly monarchical, communal, and sometimes Republican body of societies, it appears, its tenets of social constructs and societal organisation, are highly interrogating the current gear of social organisation and governance structures (Western Democracy) in many African Nation-States. Most crisis in Africa are political and many times bother on regime changes and succession challenges. This paper examines how the Nigerian state non commercialised broadcast media deal with issues of crisis communication during elections and regime changes. The state owned media in Nigeria is expected to be an organ of the state for social organisation, mobilisation, and stability through effective dissemination of Information. This paper’s main objective is to explore the crisis of cultural individuality of media practitioners, in the context of global standards of media practice and the challenges of democracy and regime change in Nigeria, in order to contribute knowledge to the debates on reassessment of democracy and globalisation from the African perspective.