By Michael Onwuka, Enugu
Former Director General, Nigeria Broadcasting Commission, Professor Armstrong Idachaba, has reiterated the call for the regulation of the social media.
Idachaba made the call Thursday in Enugu while delivering the 8th Inaugural Lecture of Godfrey Okoye University.
The professor of Mass Communication, who spoke on ‘Media Convergence: Nature and Relevance in Nigeria,’ said that regulation of the social media would curb the excesses and ‘rudeness’ of the platforms.
Ikengaonline reports that converged media is a media strategy that combines the three types of media in marketing, namely, owned, paid, and earned media to deliver messages across all channels.
He described media convergence as a good opportunity for socioeconomic development but harmful if not regulated.
He said that advancement in Information Communication Technology, ICT, had turned most internet users to content creators without rules guiding them.
According to him, media convergence has brought so much freedom and flexibility of expression that governments across the world are evolving policies and strategies that can curb its excesses.
Idachaba said that every government needed to be concerned about the destructive and disruptive impacts of converged media with a view to stemming it.
“The new face of the social media is ‘rudeness’. New technology does not care about your privacy. It is something that affects peoples’ lives in a way that they do not want.
“Almost every country in the world is beginning to reshape its public policy to address this challenge,” he argued.
He appealed to makers and producers of media and technology contents as well as media policy formulators to seek adaptive means for the maximisation of converged media.
“The new reality is that scholars and policy makers must continue to interrogate the impact of this converged media for posterity and humanity.
“Converged media has come to stay with humanity and so are the disruptiveness, the rudeness and the innovativeness that come with it,” Idachaba said.
