Trends of Specialisation in Mass Communication Education: Implications for Journalism Practice in Nigeria
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Date
2013-06
Journal Title
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Publisher
Faculty of Communication and Information Sciences, University of Ilorin, Ilorin, Nigeria
Abstract
This research examined the trends of specialisation among students who are enrolled for mass communication studies in selected Nigerian tertiary institutions. The study was framed out of the observation that students of mass communication are increasingly disinterested in journalism aspects of mass communication. The main objective was to provide empirical evidence on the specialisation interests of these students during their mass communication training programmes as well as the impact of their choices on mass communication training and its impact on the profile of practitioners of journalism in Nigeria. Through the survey method, stratified and purposive sampling procedure was adopted to gather data from two hundred and six respondents from three universities, a federal polytechnic and a college offering mass communication as a discipline. Data collected were analysed using percentage and frequency. The result indicates that the majority of students prefer public relations, advertising or broadcasting rather than journalism as a field of specialisation. Based on this finding, it was concluded that only few graduates of mass communication are likely to take up journalism practice in future, thus diminishing the hope of injecting professionally trained persons into the practice of journalism in Nigeria.
Description
Keywords
Specialisation, Journalism Training, Broadcasting, Public Relations, Advertising, Gender
Citation
La‟aro, O.A, Omoloso, A.I, Kadiri, K.K. (2012): Trends of specialisation in mass communication education: Implications for journalism practices in Nigeria. International. Journal of Information Processing and Communication, 4(2); 22-39. Published by Faculty of Communication and Information Sciences, University of Ilorin, Ilorin.