A webinar series entitled, “Digital Disruptions Shaping Media and Communication”, was organised by the Association of Communication Scholars and Professionals of Nigeria (ACSPN) with support from Dataphyte. The University of Jos and Dennis Osadebay University, Asaba, were partners in the webinar series, which was aimed at students, professionals, professors, and lecturers.
The webinar’s keynote speaker was CEO of Dataphyte, Joshua Olufemi, while a multimedia storyteller, Bethel Olujobi, moderated the discussions. Mr Olufemi spoke extensively on the impact of digital disruptions on media and communication.
Technology, he asserted, “always influences communication and the creation and dissemination of knowledge.”
Mr Olufemi gave insights by presenting the reading behaviour statistics from the Reuters digital report of 2022. He highlighted that there had been a fall in the use of prints and radio from 63 percent to 51 percent in recent times worldwide. He said digital transformation had opened up access, noting that it had made what used to be structured more democratised.
Olufemi noted that media organisations were attempting to ensure the usage of first-party, saying that it was becoming more significant than third-party data, providing news producers with a greater incentive to hold their data.
He emphasised that distribution, content, and research were impacting how digital disruptions shaped media and communication. Where and to whom people turned for information was being distorted by digital technology, and tools such as artificial intelligence, podcasts, and substack were democratising the field, he noted.
He further said that the focus should not be on digital disruptions per se but how media organisations would keep up with the present digital changes reshaping the media landscape as well as how the educational institutions would use digital technologies in their curricula and experiments in the classrooms to prepare students for Nigeria’s evolving media landscape.
Participants in the webinar had the opportunity to ask questions during an interactive session.
Abioye Samuel, a student and participant, asked how AI encouraged journalism. Mr Olufemi responded that AI was creativity and innovation, and innovation would always stimulate new methods.
According to a lecturer at Dennis Osadebey University, Dr Joyce Ogwezi, digital space was here to stay. She expressed concern that remote locations lacked connection to the digital world, noting that new technologies had the capacity to undermine established teaching and learning paradigms.
In his closing remarks, Mr Olufemi urged the audience to embrace AI and other digital disruptions and to stop thinking of them as undermining human intelligence. He emphasised that because of the localisation of news that human intelligence provided, journalists were still relevant today, which involved localizing grassroots information and creating content for the people, of the people and by the people.