MEDIA EFFECTS ON AUDIENCES ATTITUDES, VALUES AND BELIEFS IN NIGERIA

Abstract

This paper examines how media influences audience attitudes, values, and beliefs in Nigeria using a hypodermic needle and the uses and gratifications theories. It also examines how audience members respond to media information in terms of how their attitudes, values, and beliefs change as a result of various media contents. It examines how media influences have altered our way of thinking, acting, and forming new views. It demonstrates how the media can pressure, manipulate, convince, and sometimes even rule the world in both positive and negative ways. It also shows how the media is powerful to the point where it may be considered to be somewhat of a double-edged sword. The paper examines, using a literature review methodology, how the media's influence has impacted numerous facets of human life, including particular practices, personal views and beliefs, or, better yet, distorting an individual's knowledge of a given subject, as well as how the media's influence has impacted the psychosocial development of the audience, with a focus on children, teens, and the general adult population in Nigeria, where the media's influence is felt most strongly. The work also demonstrates that audiences will always seek the best experience when using the media for information or enjoyment, asserting that the human brain thrives on experience, sight, sound, emotion, and a host of intellectual and sensory mores that need to be satisfied, and that this drive and search pushes the boundaries to which the media constantly try to meet at all times. The paper ends by stating that it is obvious that the media have a significant impact on attitudes, values, and beliefs in Nigeria. It is strongly believed that if children, some unsupervised youths, and adults in Nigeria have access to all the information from the media at large, they might be influenced. Therefore, it suggests that every parent should make it a point to protect their children from various influences that can be made on them through media content. It also suggests that all viable NGOs in Nigeria engage in a variety of advocacy programmes to inform the youth and young adults in Nigeria about proper societal values and that the government at all levels put in place adequate policy to regulate and control the use of the media in Nigeria.