Assessment of the impact of new media and political news channels in West Africa: on the example of Ghana and Nigeria

Mustapha Muhammed Jamiu ORCID: 0000-0001-8239-5808 Doctor of Philosophy Assistant, the department of Mass Communications, Peoples' Friendship University of Russia 117198, Russia, Moscow oblast', g. Moscow, ul. Ulitsa miklukho-Maklaya, 6 istjabah@gmail.com Other publications by this author

Agyei Stephen Obiri Doctor of Philosophy PhD candidate, the department of Social and Differential Psychology, Peoples' Friendship University of Russia 117198, Russia, Moscow oblast', g. Moscow, ul. Ulitsa miklukho-Maklaya,, 6 stephenobiri99@gmail.com Other publications by this author

Introduction

The role of the new media in the political, social and religious lives of people has been tremendous. It has permeated every aspect of our modern-day existence. Prior to the age of the internet, the mainstream media played a very seminal role in how audience members receive and act on the information ^[1] although; not as fast as it is happening today but the mainstream media were the key agenda setters for what citizens would discuss. Thus, the mainstream media was the “heart” of our everyday conversation.

The advent of the internet, therefore, was a major change in the discourse and how the media began to operate. Access to the news was easier and faster as compared to the period before the internet and the audience shifted their attention to the consumption of online news and this ease of access will increase the level of participation and engagement of all the audience members ^[2]. .. It is worth noting that African, unlike the other western countries, just woke up to the effective usage of new media for political participation and the practice of democracy only came to popularity in 2010 ^[3].

The new (social) media has now emerged as the arena where people now seek information and this interest in seeking information has increased recently, more specifically, the interest in political news. Thus, this paper assesses the effects of the new media in this information era in tandem with the channels the audience use to access this political news and to what extent they are interested in politics.

Literature review

The relationship between traditional media and new media is no more of a supplementary effort since new media is now tools the journalists are also leveraging on for campaigns Owen D. ^[4]. Fletcher and Nielson ^[1] noted that the exposure of information on social media is confronted with different types of information whether they are interested or not. And this, they note, makes it essential to understand the role of social media in the “news ecosystem” (P: 3).

Bosch et. al ^[5] in their work on Facebook and politics in Africa examined how Facebook has affected the political discourse in Zimbabwe and Kenya. They noted that social media facilitate political discussions and that it is an extension of the real-life political discourse online. However, the authors did not examine whether the audience was interested in continuing the conversation online.

Today, social media is used by the audience to participate in the political discourse and the news media and politicians capitalize on the new media to reach a large audience and ^[6] also, due to the emergence of the new media, the audience members are able to obtain political news through this medium and to collaborate in making and sharing news to their followers on the new media. They posit that the youth are taking advantage of the new media to make their voices heard in the political arena and to participate in politics and thus their interest in political news has increased and this is due to the new media ^[6]. Owen D.

In their study, Kristoffer Holt et. all ^[7], notes that age plays a very seminal role in how people develop an interest in political news. They argue that youth uses social media essentially for political purposes more often than the older people while the older ones prefer the mainstream media for their political news. This, the authors say, “shows a clear gap in the patterns of media use” [7: 30].

Data and Method

Data for this study were collected from a web-based online survey of simple random sampling from 199 people in Ghana and Nigeria. The survey was conducted within the period of six months, thus, from February to July. The quantitative research technique was used in this study.

Analysis and discussion

The finding of this research is on two major areas; Interest of people in Politics and political news, and frequent usage of a particular media outlet as a source for political information. news and new media. In other words, the study assesses the effects of new media use and political interest as well as the channels respondents use to access political information.

Political interest

Politics largely affects us in so many ways and it is really intrusive in our everyday lives. The majority of people, therefore, want to be politically inclined and to be abreast of all that is happening in their countries.

Interest in Political News

{ Figure1}.

We gather ed that a lot of respondents are either somewhat interested in political news or very interested in political news which buttresses the idea that people care about politics because it affects every aspect of the economy and life. If one sits aloof without adding his voice or being interested in what might affect his or her life, it must be worrying. Politics is that which affects life. So people are interested. In contrast, respondents are not really extremely interested in politics and thus we could say that politicians might be extremely interested and not ordinary citizens who are already burdened with the pressures of life and probably tired of the same circle of politicians and their promises. Thus, they might not be extremely interested in it. One fascinating thing is that few respondents noted that they are not at all interested. Which is quite revealing! This means that politicians should not just take the citizens for a ride but should be concerned about them in the sense that they really monitor whatever politicians do.

Frequent usage of a particular media outlet for political information in the previous week

{ Figure2}.

The authors hypothesized that the traditional media might be the media that they would be interested to watch political news because they are seen as accurate, truthful, objective and factual as it is required of journalists. On the contrary, in figure 2, respondents rely on social media for their political news. In this section, a large number of the respondents said that they access their political news from WhatsApp messages and as it is noted by Cheeseman et. al ^[8], in their paper that, “WhatsApp reflects changing attitudes concerning the impact of new digital technologies on democracy”. Thus, WhatsApp has become a veritable trove where all kinds of political news are shared instantly and go “viral”.It is the dominant messaging platform in forty African countries ^[8]. This makes it one of the widely used and accessible ways for people to access political news in Africa and specifically, Ghana and Nigeria. Twitter is also widely used by the respondents who said that they also use the platform to get political news. Many studies have contented that radio is more accessible to TV, however, the current study has revealed something different. The respondents accessed political news through television to radio. Due to the dwindling reading culture of 'hardcopy' newspapers recently among many Africans, it's not surprising that newspapers emerged as the least used to access political news. People now prefer the 'softcopy' on their phones instead, especially among the Millennials. According to the United Nations World Population Prospects 2019 ^[9], in sub-Saharan Africa, for example,

Conclusion and Further research

The new media has now become part of our political discourse and citizens use the new media to access political news due to their interest in political information. The study has revealed that people are very interested in political news in Ghana and Nigeria and that we recommend that politicians should pay attention to what the citizens say and their grievances. Thus, the new media is now the most populous tool to garner people to protest against policies of the government that the people think will have negative consequences on their livelihoods. It is evident from the study that Whatsapp is the most dominant new media that respondents use to access political news, shockingly is the fact that the majority of respondents said that they access political news via television as compared to a small number of people who access political news via radio.

Some of the respondents chose other social media platforms like; Instagram, Snapchat, Linked In, WeChat, blogs, Telegram. These are new media platforms that need further research to ascertain the effects it has on the audience.