Online media and global communication research in Nigeria

Abstract

The growth of global online media necessitates a better knowledge of how these media affect the world. Communication researchers have examined how rhetoric and globalization interact dynamically; how information spreads through cross-cultural interactions, and how a growing global media landscape affects culture, society, economy, and politics. However, no study has aggregated the areas of focus of such studies in order to establish a trend of the discussion of online media and global communication scholarship in Nigeria. In this essay, we offer a pathway for understanding approaches to scholarship in online media and global communication in Nigeria. We review all articles on online media and global communication that were published in two Nigerian academic journals, The Nigerian Journal of Communication and the Journal of Communication and Media Research between 2015 and 2021 using our content categories of authorship, theory/theories used, study population, method of study and research focus. We found that social media, which has proved to be a very hot area of research among scholars worldwide, also occupied the pride of place among Nigerian scholars and that collaboration in research, which is a major way of growing and advancing knowledge, was also significantly common among Nigerian communication researchers. On the low side, however, we found, among others, that lack of funding was a major issue in Nigerian communication research as none of the 73 articles that we analyzed was funded.