A Critique Of The Roles Of Indigenous Communicative Acts And The Modern Mass Media In Contemporary Ghana

Abstract

This study is located within the growing scholarship on news-sharing in contemporary mass media channels vis-à-vis indigenous communicative acts and protocols in the Global South, using Ghana as a specific geographical entry point. Evidence showed that news and information sharing, particularly on culturally sensitive matters, in the contemporary mass media channels have drawn a critical attention of some Ghanaians in recent times. The critics appear to have misgivings about the lack of concern for the values of communication and ethics of appropriateness of communication in the modern mass media channels. Consequently, this study critiqued the notions and processes involved in news and information sharing in indigenous communicative acts in relation to contemporary mass media channels, and the perceived tensions, focusing on three cases purposively selected to match three themes on, “news about the dead,” “news on divulging of private information and conversation,” and “news concerning deliberate falsehood.” In view of these themes, this study attempts at establishing whether some indigenous communicative acts and protocols of news-sharing could have served as a solution to the phenomenon, or they have outlived their practicality. Furthermore, it explores how the modern mass media could be socio-culturally positioned to adequately meet the needs of society. Regarding methods, multi-dimensional qualitative approaches of data gathering were employed. Primary and secondary sources of data which include in-depth semi-structured interviews and, media texts (audio-visuals, pictures, newspapers, and internet sources), and administrative texts (press releases, letters, and memos) respectively, were used. Textual, together with critical and interpretive analyses were used. The encoding/decoding model of communication was deployed as the central theoretical framework. This model is very significant in elucidating the comprehensibility of how people make meaning through news-sharing in ‘everyday natural settings.’ This study, therefore unearths a theoretical connection between socio-cultural index of encoding/decoding dualism and news- sharing for the purpose of examining new social media driving forces of convergence and interactivity, globalisation and glocalisation, and proliferation and mass media channels’ ownership vis-à-vis the cultural context. The revealing finding of this study is that participants, comprising cultural experts and media practitioners were influenced by diverse protocols such as intertextual cultural knowledge, personal experiences and dispositions, professional orientation, and biases as they decoded the cases/images. Also, very insightful finding is that the media practitioners often displayed their interest in cultural awareness issues and read the cases in the preferred and negotiated modes of the encoding/decoding model. And that they were not pleased with the originators of the publications and those who shared them. Further finding is that the cultural experts, mainly, used the preferred approach to read and were also irritated by the creators of the texts and those who published them. This study concludes that indigenous communicative acts still address the communication needs of people in rural communities. The contemporary mass media channels are considered as high-class in visuals, therefore are unable to address deep-rooted societal and culturally sensitive issues. Finally, it has also been disclosed that so far as the contemporary mass media channels reach huge audiences and can captivate, the useful values of both media should be integrated to provide effective communication to the people of Ghana.