Agenda Setting-Inclusiveness in Nigeria: Challenges of the New Media

Abstract

Participation and stakeholders’ engagement are critical to the success of any democratic governance. The mass media not only provide a platform for the cross – fertilization of ideas and issues which transform to meaningful agenda that propel societal concerns, they also determine the salience of such issues that engage the attention of the society. However, the advent of the social media has put the conventional media on their toes as they seem to be fast conceding their hitherto exclusive privilege of agenda- setting to the social media who with their liberal and increased access to the public sphere and have widened the prospects of audience participation in the digital media space. But this is not without its attendant challenges. Communication engagements in the social media, though robust, remain largely uncoordinated. It is even being speculated , and reasonably too, that the same forces which hijacked and hegemonised the agenda of the  political elite on the masses through the mass media are subtly dictating the pace of public discourse even on the social media.  It is against this backdrop that this paper examined the operations and activities of the social media in enhancing agenda-setting inclusiveness within the context of a diverse and heterogeneous entity like Nigeria. Through desk study and documentary analysis the paper ex-rayed the challenges necessitated by the change of paradigms from the old to the new media and suggest a creative synergy between the two if the country’s democratic experiment would benefit from and maximise the advantages of an all- inclusive governance.

Keywords: Stakeholders’ Engagement, Mass Media, Inclusive Governance, Agenda – setting, Social Media