ABSTRACT
Popular cultures constitute the predominant attitudes, living styles, and aspirations practised consciously and unconsciously by the people in a society. They emanate from the admixture of indigenous practices and foreign media influences that permeate the people's ways of life. Sometimes, popular cultures can be regarded as youth cultures. In Nigeria in recent times, Big Brother Nigeria (BBN), a TV reality show franchise that started in 2006, has continued to draw criticisms and commendations from Nigerian citizens at home and abroad. Concerned citizens have drummed up various arguments and counter-arguments with regard to issues emanating from BBN show. Nevertheless, it continues to be produced such that it was even produced during the COVID-19 lockdown in the country. Therefore, this paper is interested in the arguments that people advanced for the cancellation or continuation of BBN shows in the Nigerian media landscape. It will investigate the socio-political implications considered by the Nigerian government through its regulatory bodies not to cancel the TV show. Its findings will be compared with the agenda-setting and social responsibility theories of the mass media. As an explorative study, it will rely on secondary data. It is hoped that the study will contribute to the literature on popular cultures and related fields. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023.
ABSTRACT
Just like in other African countries, the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic has transformed the music industry. In Yorubaland, the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted the Yoruba indigenous music, as many artistes used music to bring awareness of health issues. Therefore, this study explored how Yoruba indigenous music artistes advocated health issues surrounding the COVID-19 outbreak in Nigeria and the effects on their fans’ well-being. Employing quantitative content analysis and in-depth interview techniques, this article analysed the video-songs of select Yoruba artistes of different genres and sampled opinions of indigenous music commentators. Findings revealed that, though the musicians advocated strict adherence to personal hygiene and obedience to government health instructions on COVID-19 pandemic, their rhetorical techniques and perceived government’s insincerity to alleviate the effects of the pandemic might have affected the impact of the advocacy negatively. Nevertheless, the researchers believe that the Yoruba indigenous popular artistes’ advocacy helped people believe COVID-19 was real and dangerous. Therefore, the study recommended that Yoruba music artistes need to infuse more convincing arguments about the causes, effects and solutions to health crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic, using cultural motifs that can capture their audience social reality. It also recommended that government needs to provide for economic, physical and psychological needs of its citizens in a situation when restrictions have been placed on the citizens’ movements due to health crises. © 2021 Universita' degli Studi di Roma 'La Sapienza'. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
COVID-19 pandemic era has further energized humans to consider their health more than before, especially in the digital age when they experience a deluge of health information. This study, therefore, examined COVID-19 digital sources, health message types and how the use of African Indigenous language media enhanced people's utilization of coronavirus health messages. Using an online questionnaire and in-depth interview data collection methods, respondents received preventive COVID-19 health messages on social distancing and personal hygiene from mostly interactive digital sources, which hardly infused African Indigenous language media in the health message. However, African Indigenous languages motivated respondents to utilize COVID-19 messages, though people still spread COVID-19 fake news through Indigenous media. Nonetheless, integrating African Indigenous language media into digital health communication can confer credibility on information sources. Still, there is a need to fight the use of digital media to spread fake news.