ABSTRACT
To what extent do these assumptions apply to university students in the African context, where access to new media technologies is not as prevalent as in developed countries? Do new technologies such as the Internet, electronic mail (email), mobile phones and interactive multimedia systems have parallel effects on users in developing and developing countries? This chapter examines the extent to which university students use new technologies as forms of popular media for participatory communication in the public sphere and to complement the traditional news media. Celebration of the new media is based partly on the perceived negative influence of traditional mass media on audience members. Communication researchers Lerner and Schramm (1976) and Tehranian (1989) documented the dysfunctional role of the mass media in developing countries. This was against the prevailing beliefs in the decades of the 1960s and 1970s during which the mass media were projected as facilitators of socio-economic development in developing countries. According to Lerner and Schramm (1976: 341-2):
Throughout the less-developed regions, people have been led to want more than they can get. This can be attributed in part to the spread of the mass media, which inevitably show and tell people about the good things of life that are available elsewhere . . . As people in the poor countries were being shown and told about ‘goodies’ available in developed countries, they were also being taught about their own inferiority – at least in terms of wealth and well-being. Recognition of the disparities between the rich and poor countries produced among some a sense of hopelessness, among others a sense of aggressiveness. Both apathy and aggression usually are counterproductive to genuine development efforts.
