Radio and Peace Communication in Kaduna Metropolis: A Study of Kaduna State Media Corporation’s Peace Arena

By

Author

Presented To

Department of Arts

ABSTRACT
Media has always remained a powerful tool for shaping the strategic interests of nations across the globe. However, it has been found and researched in relation to peace-building, that few media organisations have been able to guard the strategic interests of the nation through their broadcasts or write-ups. The assumption of the study is that media can create the needed atmosphere for peace and tolerance through having programmes on peace sustainance without waiting for conflict to erupt before engaging in peacebuilding. The research was carried out to evaluate the effectiveness of a radio programme in communicating peace in Kaduna State as lack of vital or effective information can, at any stage of a conflict, make people desperate, restless and easy to manipulate. The need arose as a result of the on-going debate on the role of the media in peacebuilding. Despite various attempts through the media, especially radio to mitigate conflicts in Nigeria, cases of conflicts, sentiments, discrimination and hatred still prevail in Nigeria, particularly in the Northern parts. Hence the study aimed at enhancing radio communication system for proper and effective conflict resolution and peace-building especially in heterogeneous societies such as Nigeria. Qualitative and quantitative methods were used to gather data from listeners in Kaduna metropolis. The study was premised on Social Responsibility Theory which states that during conflicts, the media has the power to either escalate or mitigate it and that a responsible press should promote peace, human rights, give intelligent account of the day‟s event in a context which gives them meaning and facilitate development. Meyer‟s formula was adopted to get the Sample size of 384. Simple random sampling procedure was used to select the number of localities to study. Method of analysis statistical package for the social sciences was used to analyse the collected data and content analysis was used to analyse the selected episodes of the tape and selected script. One of the findings of this study was that indigenous language was not used during the programme and this could hinder the enhancement of creating, gathering of information, feedbacks, audience‟ feelings and perceptions. Another finding was that audiences were not given the opportunity to initiate new discourse on peace and this could also limit the effectiveness of the programme. Hence there are noticeable gaps in the programme. Thus it is recommended that Peace Arena on Capital FM, Kaduna, should be held at least twice a week to improve awareness and further promote peace and tolerance. It is thus imperative to experiment with local language which is more appealing to the larger population of the study area and create more active roles for the audience so as to ensure greaterpeace as championed by the programme.