Galvanizing Indigenous Media: Old and New Media Contrasts

Not to dwell on the ignorance that begot this article, I’ll simply use it as a statement to showcase the ignorance of our current media platforms which have the mainstream audience being fucked with, by obtuse information; I mean, how does such content still circulate our timelines and our public spaces? It is an insult to the collective consciousness of modern Africa. Last year brought an expulsion of a few old ideologies; like the dictator, Mugabe, removed from his long-serving post, to give hope to a new generation, a new voice. Other layers of our society are being broken so that a new Africa can blossom. But one of the major incessant tools still under the control of the old ways is our Media.

Strange snake swallows N36 million cash in JAMB office https://t.co/JNudrYc3EM pic.twitter.com/ZjCAtFaMzW

— Daily Post Nigeria (@DailyPostNGR) February 10, 2018

Media is a very strong tool in putting the general alignment and understanding of the country’s populace in a uniform direction.

Diverse perspectives, cultural breakthroughs, adaptive and experimental approaches, transparency and integrity, those are the modules new media is built on, it’s a very rare opportunity for emerging generations to be able to grasp ideologies and run with their narratives but hey! it’s the 21st century and thanks to the technology and the freedom that comes with it, information is being spread in faster innovation channels than traditional media. It doesn’t even end here. – Korede Ogundiya, Co-founder of More Branches.

If you’re alive, you’re definitely consuming some form of content through social media which in the internet age is a strong tool in passing agendas and ideologies into the general stream of consciousness of a large range of people. There’s also creative content all around, the music, film, cartoon, fashion, art, all are statements that carry messages through you without the direct push, this is more subtle and abstract. And lastly, you have news which tops the media line in passing propaganda.

Growing up, we were all raised by some form of media in Africa, either through rhetorical news channels like CNN, BBC, and local news our parents forced us to watch all the time because they were in control of the Tv, or the stockpiles of the newspapers they buy to catch with local political news and gossip. As a kid, you had a little space to control what you watched, you focused it all on cartoons, movies, local soap operas, etcetera, as you immersed as much from the western culture you could get your eyes on, taking in every form of content and then with the internet, came and an explosion of everything all at once through Youtube, Netflix, Hulu, NdaniTV, Iroko TV, etc and our own media platform starting from content curators via the internet, this gave birth to platforms like Linda Ikeji (though they put out medicore and shit content), and subsequent iterations of new age media platforms.

New media is used to describe content made available using different forms of electronic communication made possible through the use of computer technology. Generally, the phrase new media describes content available on-demand through the Internet.

The importance of media shouldn’t be belittled in any way, because it controls a large space of our life and how we perceive the world around us, and Africa has a whole has been dominated for centuries by the wrong and limiting side of media which places information as a regular scheduled programming to dull the conscious mind of the people while the higher forms of power, which in most African nations is dominated by the government on top as saviours or the only citizens with a good enough thought process. There is also external media which is your foreign platforms also taking advantage of lack of structure in our content to ‘help’ create and document our own stories from their perspective thereby breaking us down as they never get a clear depiction of what and who we are, which is not their fault because they’re not really immersed in our shoes well enough to tell our story.

Now more than ever, it’s critical to have the right tools and companies out there being in charge of reshaping our media into a real structure capable of telling our stories in real time, as different sides and paradigms of our culture take shape in new lights. There’s no place for ignorant media, recent ridiculous headlines have remade the case for a need to have every fragment of reporting and documenting carefully thought out and interpreted for the audience to consume. We need to create a safe and conscious enough environment able to foster growth and more productive realities for the people. It’s time we stop being patronized by simple forms of media through companies and platforms that have been long corrupted or don’t have the common sense to filter through the information presented to them while giving room for relevant conversations of depths from the understanding of the audience themselves. Introducing minds to trustable media, through visual, literal or creative forms.

The new forms of media being run by a younger generation should be aimed at taking apart old ways, ways that don’t give the real solutions and knowledge for the people, as media platforms our goal should be one of documentation with morality, taking notes of the changes that are inspiring a revolution around. Our continent for too long has been broken because information is always kept as a scarce commodity, even in the internet age mass media is being controlled by old platforms still flooding the environment with dumb, irrelevant content. We need to take charge of our own stories while giving the world our own global and domestic views on issues that affect our immediate environment and humanity as a whole. The story and realistic cases affecting Africans all over need to be shared in unique reinvented modules.