The political economy of mass media in Nigeria: A Thematic Approach

Mass media organizations globally, are beginning to be seen as industries that are into production, distribution and consumption of products just like any standard industrial organisation. However, the Nigerian mass media organisations are not an exception to this emerging or rather emerged trend in the field of communication. This paper aims to examine the political economy of the media, its relevance or applicability to the Nigerian media landscape as well as its implications on media practice. The study which was accomplished by a thorough literature evaluation that incorporates elements of the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA), as well as Qualitative Content Analysis (QCA) found out that, commodification, structuration, spatialisation, and market concentration are some of the factors that characterised the political economy of the media not only in Nigeria but the world over. These characteristics frequently lead to deterioration of journalistic practices, hyper-commercialisation of news, reduction of independent media sources, concentration on the largest markets, risk avoidance, and reduced investment in less profitable media tasks such as investigative reporting, as well as the neglect of smaller and poorer segments of the potential audience and often a politically unbalanced range of news. The paper however recommends that,media practitioners in Nigeria are supposed to share many of the aspirations of liberal accounts of a citizen-serving media. They should be able to challenge the ability of corporate ownership on which liberalism is contingent, advocating instead actions to create a more diverse, pluralistic and democratic media system catering for the widest range of public interests based on acceptable media standards.