THE information and communication technology, mobile communication devices and the internet are playing a definite and consideration role in people’s social lives. The culture and lifestyle of individuals as well as their interpersonal relationships has been affected due to accessibility to various emerging communication media, as well as the speed of communication that the new media provides:
These developing technology devices help to increase social interactions and new media awareness. For MacArthur Foundation (2008), “Social network sites, online games, video-sharing sites, and gadgets such as ipods and mobile phones are now fixtures of youth culture.” They opine that, these new technologies have permeated/young lives that one finds it hard to believe that less than a decade ago they had barely registered in the lives of youth. They regard the web, cell phones Black berries, ipods, ipads and others as essential tools for living.
This research explores that the new media might be one of the factors responsible for social changes in the area of Nigerian Cultural Values among Nigerian young adult and that social nuances, cultural values may not be taken into consideration in the pursuit of developing new technologies for social interaction.
THE NEW MEDIA
The new media play an important role in the relationship and socialization. The new media induce change and might induce reactions from the users. Hence, the new media involves social media (Facebook, Twitter, whatsapp, BBM chat, friend ster, My space, etc) where users/members use the internet to build their social network/relationship, sharing interests, and activities together. According to cardoso, 2006 and Rice, 1999 in Jakubowle new media can be referred to, all those means of communication, representation and knowledge (i.e media) in which we find the digitalization of the signal and its content, that possess dimensions of multimediality and interactivity.
The above definition is comprehensive and inclusive of everything from the mobile phone to digital television and also embracing game consoles and the internet… The new media may be termed thus because they are mediators of communication, because they introduce the novelty of incorporating new technological dimensions, because they combines interpersonal communication and mass media dimensions on one and the same platform, because they induce organizational change and new forms of time management and because they seek the synthesis of the textual and visual rhetoric, thus promoting new audiences and social reconstruction tools.
Thus, it can be said that the new media enables interactivity among the users and also inform and induce change. Joseph Turow (2009), stated that the internet as a mass medium is a “worldwide system of computer networks; a network of networks in which users at any one computer can, if they have permission, get information from any other computer (and sometimes talk directly to users at other computers).” The internet performs many roles for the users. It can serve one individual or a group. The internet perform a lot of functions, such as, sending and receiving electronics mark, transferring files, chatting, surfing and remote access of computers to access files and programs.
CULTURE, MEDIA AND THE PEOPLE
Newhill and La Pagha (1986) say that culture “refers to a people’s total way of life. It includes everything an individual has learned as a member of a society and will pass into future generations. It affects the system of government, economic system, art forms, music, literature, religion, custom and all material objects of a society’s technology.”
Igwe and Adeyemi (2011) also defines culture as “truly the totality of a people’s way of life at a given point in time. Culture involves the way people eat, worship, interact, perform socio-economic, political, educational and diverse activities with such a country or society.
“A culture is transmitted through observation, children learn their culture through their own observations of what their culture considers right and wrong and it is also acquired through interaction with the environment. (Kottak, 2004). In addition, cultures are learned and not biologically inherited, and humans learn through direct experience (situational learning), observation (social learning), and symbols (symbolic learning).
For cultural anthropologists, cultural items ranging from dress to technology to sexual practices to dietary habits are enormously diverse, the culture of one group is distinct of from another based on different values, beliefs, norms and other characteristics (Igwe, et all, 2011; scupin, 2006). Every human society has a culture; it plays a vital role for societal transformation and development. Kottak (2004) Indicates that “societies are integrated and patterned through their dominant economic force, social patterns, key symbols and care values. Nobody is born knowing how to fit into a society or knowing the cultural values of his community. The learning process starts at home, with parents, brothers, sisters and then moves to friends, relatives and the mass media. The youth today get absorbed with the media.
Earlier, it was the television that occupies them but now, the internet is used almost every second. Phones, ipods, laptops, etc are all connected to the internet and these have “displaced much of the socializing influence that once came from parents… stability of a society is ensured through the transmission of such values to the next generation” (Vivian, 2001).
People have always yearned to belong to somewhere, to have that sense of who they are and where they are from. Often, people get confused about their social lives, if how they are living is how they ought to live. The youth is mostly affected by this, they are worried about who they are. Gross berg, wartella, Whitney and wise (2006) urge that “this beatify crisis was often assumed to be linked to the growing power of the media, (and media images) in the lives of these youths. Infact, there can be little doubt that the strength of the traditional sources of identity – religion, family, and work – has declined in proportion to the growing power of the mass media, leisure activities, and the consumer lifestyles in which media and leisure are bound up even as they define and promote such lifestyles.”
As social media become even more seamlessly woven into our lives, we may discover additional ways they influence our lives. With all these work of media, can one rightly say that new media/social media are transmitting cultural values! Or is there cultural intrusion? Is the western culture intruding into our African Nigerian culture? How do our young adults prefer dressing, talking and what kind of activities do they involve in?
Sanction, when a nation has her value system in order, no obstacles are in surmountable and no problems are without solution. Nigeria are known for their communal lives, a person is identified or known within his community.
According to Newhill and Paglia (1986), “Africans are taught that people must fulfill their moral and legal responsibilities towards others, and the oral literature teaches that they must fulfill them. The oral literature teaches that those who do not will be punished. African poems and songs often contain a moral or rule for living. Africans are known for their good human relationship.
According to Anaedorie (2007), Africans are known for their sense of good human relations which is seen on their interpersonal communication and there is also a sense of the sacredness of life, and in view of this, he argues that, the African does not like violence parse this is because shedding of blood is abhorred people who were killed were those whose continued existence was a threat to life of others and the peace of community. In such cases, the principle that it is better for one man to die than for all the community to perish, applied. War was only taken to as a last resort, that is when all formal and normal course of action to search for peace had failed. Murder was not encouraged, especially within the clan.
Nigeria is known for its rich cultural practices, which according to tronne Hawkins, “Entertainment and leisure activities in Nigeria are typically marked by traditional cultural practices; festivals, musical performances with singing and drumming, dancing, and exhibitions are common forms of entertainment for many Nigerians.
In urban areas, entertainment is most influenced by mass media and western practices, like movies, technology and right life.” Music in its various forms plays an important part in African life. When a team of man have to labour long and hard, they often sing to the rhythm of their work. It helps keep this going, lightens the burdens, and lifts their spirits. When an African woman works through the long day, she sings too. Music plays and important part in observances of births, deaths, marriages, religious ceremonies, holidays and other special days. It contributes to the personal, individual meaning of an event!
Africans/Nigerians are known to be hospitable, friendly and live communal life instead of individual life, they are also known for their normality and respect for authority and elders but these fundamental features of our identity and culture are undergoing change.
The question is what then is being passed to this generation? How is it being done? And it the new media a contributing factor to these changes?
Nigerian cultural values are exposed in social network sites but the young adults are not highly influenced by those values. They believe that their moral behaviour has not been totally destroyed and that social media affect their dressing negatively. The social media generate both positive and negative change, and did not really promote the cultural values of Nigeria. The young adults sometimes get carried away with what they observe and view in face book, twitter sites, etc. They tend to fall towards western style of dressing, their food and even the way they reason.
